UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA.    I 

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THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 


■J^^)^' 


THE  EVOLUTION 


OF 


IMMORTALITY 


BT 


S.    D.    McCONNELL,   D.D.,   D.C.L. 


Keto  gorfe 
THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON:    MACMILLAN  A,  CO.,  Ltd. 

1901 

AU  right*  rMervtd 


COPTKIQHT,   1901, 

bt  the  macmillan  company. 


NorijJOOtJ  53"S8 

J.  a  Gushing  It  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smitll 

Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


TO 

Mv.  ®^o^  iFrienti 
WILLIAM    A.    READ 

IN  RECOGNITION   OF   MANY   KINDNESSES 

AND    IN    MEMORY   OF   A    SUMMER    SUNDAY'S  WALK 

AND   TALK   IN   THE   WOODS   OF   MAINE 


»I034 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 


"For  man  is,  according  to  nature,  mortal,  as  a 
being  who  has  been  made  out  of  things  that  are 
perishable.  But  on  account  of  his  likeness  to  God 
he  can  by  piety  ward  off  and  escape  from  his 
natural  mortality  and  remain  indestructible  if  he 
retain  the  knowledge  of  God,  or  can  lose  his  incor- 
ruptibility if  he  lose  his  life  in  God." 

— Athanasius. 


THE 
EVOLUTION    OF    IMMORTALITY 

CHAPTER  I 

The  sphinx,  with  the  teeming  breasts  of  a 
woman  and  the  cruel  claws  of  a  tiger,  is  the 
eternal  parable  of  Nature.  She  is  equally 
equipped  to  produce  and  nourish  or  to  rend 
and  kill.  Men  of  all  ages  have  tried  to  gather 
from  her  stony  gaze  which  she  means  to  do. 
Not  a  few  will  turn  away  with  impatience 
from  another  attempt  to  read  the  eternal  rid- 
dle. "If  a  man  die  shall  he  live  again?" 
is  the  burden  of  the  old  drama  of  Uz. 
An  endless  human  interest  attaches  to  the 
question,  so  strong  that  however  often  it 
be  abandoned  it  must  needs  be  once  again 
renewed.  It  beckons  while  it  eludes.  There 
is  no  reason  to  believe  that  men  will  ever  be 
content  to  sit  down  before  it  or  to  definitely 
abandon  it  as  insoluble.  Once  and  again  an 
answer  has  been  found.  Plato  reasoned  that 
each  soul  is  essentially  immortal,  being  a  divine 
"idea,"  bound  up  in  the  very  being  of  God, 

B  1 


2  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

and  therefore  not  dependent  for  its  existence 
upon  any  passing  association  which  it  may 
have  with  matter.  This  conception  has  been 
sufficient  for  multitudes  of  men  through 
twenty-four  centuries  of  time.  Pythagoras 
maintained  that  a  man's  soul  comes  to  him 
from  the  body  of  some  other  man  or  inferior 
animal  which  it  has  just  left,  and  that  upon 
leaving  him  it  transmigrates  to  another  still, 
wandering  through  eternity  as  the  transient 
guest  of  unnumbered  successive  bodies.  This 
belief,  modified  in  various  ways,  has  been  in 
the  past,  and  is  to-day  probably,  entertained 
by  the  majority  of  all  who  have  a  thought  upon 
the  matter  at  all.  The  Christian  world  has  for 
a  long  time  believed  that  the  soul  and  the  body 
are  immediate  and  simultaneous  creations  of 
God,  that  they  live  in  an  intimate  partnership 
during  a  lifetime,  then  separate,  only  to  be 
reunited  ultimately  in  a  permanent  personality 
which  neither  heaven  nor  hell  will  ever  sepa- 
rate. Amidst  all  these,  other  multitudes  have 
contented  themselves,  or  felicitated  themselves, 
as  the  case  may  be,  with  the  conviction  that 
as  the  beast  dies  so  dies  a  man.  To-day  none 
of  these  beliefs  can  be  sincerely  entertained  by 
any  reasonable  man.  The  best  purpose  which 
any  of  them  can  serve  for  one  is  in  carrying 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  3 

out  Socrates's  advice,  "for  he  should  persevere 
until  he  has  attained  one  of  two  things ;  either 
he  should  discover  or  learn  the  trutti,  or  if  this 
be  impossible,  I  would  have  him  take  the  best 
and  most  irrefragable  of  human  notions,  and  let 
this  be  the  raft  upon  which  he  sails  through 
life,  —  not  without  risk,  as  I  admit,  if  he  cannot 
find  some  word  of  God  which  will  move  and 
safely  carry  him." 

The  belief  current  within  Christendom  upon 
the  question  of  the  future  life  remained  sub- 
stantially unchanged  during  the  thirteen  centu- 
ries between  Augustine  and  Darwin.  It  will 
not  be  very  difficult  to  see  where,  when,  and 
how  that  belief  came  into  Christianity.  Later 
on  I  will  try  to  do  this.  lN"or  is  it  difficult  to 
see  that  that  belief  is  rapidly,  if  silently,  dis- 
appearing from  among  thoughtful  men.  Nor, 
once  again,  will  it  be  difficult  to  show  at  least 
some  of  the  chiefest  among  the  influences 
against  which  it  cannot  persist.  This  also  I 
will  try  to  do.  This  having  been  done,  the 
ground  will  be  cleared  upon  which  to  build  a 
faith  out  of  the  material  which  human  con- 
sciousness, human  science,  and  Holy  Scripture 
can  furnish.  If  it  then  shall  appear  that  the 
doctrine  is  not  new,  but  venerable,  it  may  be 
all  the  more  readily  welcomed. 


4  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

The  Creed  says,  "  I  believe  in  the  resurrection 
of  the  body."  In  its  earlier  and  more  naive 
form  it  says  "  the  resurrection  of  the  flesh." 
This  phrase  is  capable  of  a  wider  and  more 
reasonable  interpretation  than  the  words  would 
seem  to  imply.  Such  a  meaning  is  very  gen- 
erally read  into  it.  But  when  the  phrase  was 
formulated,  it  was  intended  to  mean  precisely 
what  it  says.  This  is  the  meaning  which  it 
still  has  for  the  multitude.  It  means  that  at 
the  moment  of  death  the  soul  and  body  sepa- 
rate ;  that  the  body  slowly  decays  and  is  disin- 
tegrated ;  that  the  soul  goes  temporarily  to  a 
place  of  its  own  where  it  endures  in  a  state  of 
partial  self-consciousness  for  a  long  but  indefi- 
nite period;  that  at  the  end  of  that  period 
every  body  which  has  ever  lived  will  be  recon- 
stituted, of  the  same  matter,  with  member, 
joint,  and  limb  restored ;  that  each  soul  will  be 
reunited  to  its  own  body;  that  then  comes 
judgment,  reward,  and  doom. 

To  merely  state  this  series  of  notions  is 
sufficient  to  show  their  essential  impossibility. 
When  they  were  first  formulated  their  diffi- 
culties did  indeed  appear,  but  were  evaded 
by  arguments  Tvhich  then  sufficed,  but  which 
no  one  now  will  credit  with  any  valid- 
ity.     Irengeus,   for   example  ("  Cont.   Heres." 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  6 

y.  2),  recognizes  the  natural  impossibility  of 
recovering  the  atoms  of  the  body  from  decay, 
but  argues  that  the  body,  having  been  once 
nourished  with  the  Eucharistic  body  and 
blood  of  Christ,  is  transformed  in  quality,  and 
so  kept  distinguished  through  all  the  ages  from 
the  matter  with  which  its  dust  is  mingled.  Ter- 
tuUian  ("  De  Kesurrec.  Car."  vi.  4)  faces  the 
obvious  difficulty  :  "  Shall  the  same  flesh  which 
has  fallen  into  decay  be  so  expected  to  recover 
as  that  the  lame,  and  the  one-eyed,  and  the 
blind,  and  the  leper,  and  the  palsied  shall  come 
back  again,  although  there  can  be  no  pleasure 
in  returning  to  the  old  condition  ?  What  must 
we  say  of  the  consequences  of  resuming  the 
flesh  ?  "Will  it  again  be  subject  to  its  present 
wants  as  of  meats  and  drinks  ?  (Shall  it  come) 
from  the  devouring  fires,  and  the  waters  of  the 
sea,  and  the  maws  of  beasts,  and  the  crops  of 
birds,  and  the  stomachs  of  fishes?  Shall  we, 
having  lungs,  float?  Or  suffer  pains  in  the 
bowels,  or  having  organs  of  shame  feel  no 
shame  ?  Or  will  the  recovery  of  the  flesh  only 
revive  again  the  desire  to  escape  from  it?" 
In  reply  he  contends  that  the  human  body, 
although  formed  from  earth,  has  in  virtue  of 
having  become  human  flesh  ceased  to  be  earth 
and  been  transformed  into  a  different  substance, 


6  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

essentially  incorruptible,  just  as  gold,  although 
formed  from  earth  has  taken  on  the  quality  of 
gold,  and  gold  will  remain  even  though  ground 
to  dust  and  mixed  with  earth.  Origen  escapes 
the  difficulty  in  large  part  by  recurring  to  St. 
Paul's  dictum  that  the  body  which  perishes  is 
but  the  seed  from  which  a  new  body  will 
spring,  asserting  that  in  the  old  body  is  some 
portion,  or  organ,  or  piece  which  will  develop 
as  the  seed  of  a  plant  does  when  its  integu- 
ments are  decayed.  This  notion  of  the  func- 
tion of  the  pineal  gland,  "the  bone  Luz,"  or 
the  OS  sacrum^  appears  again  and  again.  Hardly 
anything  more  than  an  antiquarian  interest, 
however,  attaches  to  the  discussions  of  Fathers 
or  schoolmen.  They  were  so  completely  igno- 
rant of  the  laws  and  facts  of  physical  nature 
out  of  which  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  a 
bodily  resurrection  arise,  that  their  arguments 
and  speculations  are  only  as  the  serious  dispu- 
tations of  children.  They  had  no  true  concep- 
tion of  the  laws  and  qualities  of  matter,  they 
knew  nothing  of  that  complex  arrangement  by 
which  matter  becomes  the  basis  of  life.  In  a 
word,  the  popular  notions  concerning  the  resur- 
rection of  the  body  are  simply  a  survival  in  the 
midst  of  a  w^orld  which  knows  of  conceptions 
which  were  formulated  by  a  world  which  did 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  7 

not  know.  But  knowledge  is  a  fact  to  be  taken 
account  of.  The  common  man  of  to-day  cannot 
say, "  I  believe  in  the  resurrection  of  the  body," 
unless  he  either  use  it  as  a  sacrosanct  form  of 
words  conveying  no  intelligible  meaning,  or 
else  as  meaning  something  different  from  what 
the  words  connote.  He  may  legitimately  and 
honestly  use  it  in  either  of  these  ways.  Most 
men  do  so.  But  it  is  surely  desirable  that  he 
should  try  to  see  what,  precisely,  is  the  truth 
which  he  is  attempting  to  put  into  words,  and 
why  he  believes  it  to  be  a  truth.  The  knowl- 
edge which  the  world  now  has  concerning  the 
constitution  of  matter,  the  science  of  chemistry 
and  biology  and  psychology,  have  rendered  it 
quite  impossible  to  believe  in  any  future  life 
which  should  depend  upon  any  form  of  reinte- 
gration of  the  natural  body  which  has  once 
returned  to  dust.  Dust  it  is,  and  to  dust  it  doth 
return,  and  the  return  is  final  so  far  as  concerns 
the  personality  once  bound  up  with  it.  If  a 
material  basis  for  another  life  be  demanded, 
as  it  must  be,  the  requisite  body  must  be 
sought  elsewhere  and  by  other  means.  No 
doubt  the  current  speech  of  man  about  it  all 
will  long  remain  unchanged.  In  the  region 
of  religion  phrases  which  are  at  first  used  as 
attempts   to  state  truth  scientifically  become 


8  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

sanctified  by  use  and  hallowed  by  association. 
Little  by  little  they  lose  the  sharpness  of  con- 
notation which  they  at  first  possess,  and  become 
symbols  which  stand  for  complex  emotions 
which  are  awakened  by  their  sound,  or  for 
truths  which  are  eternal,  but  for  which  no  final 
or  adequate  phrase  can  ever  be  found.  "Re- 
surgam  "  will  still  be  chiselled  upon  tombs,  the 
"  hope  of  a  joyful  resurrection  "  will  still  cheer 
and  solace  the  simple  man's  dying,  the  bodies 
of  the  dead  will  be  laid  in  the  earth  reverently 
so  long  as  it  remains  true  that  the  thought  of 
the  personality  who  has  left  our  sight  is  bound 
up  with  that  of  the  muddy  vesture  of  decay 
which  it  wore  while  known  and  loved.  And  all 
this  in  spite  of  the  categorical  assertion  of  the 
apostle  that  this  "  is  not  that  body  which  shall 
be,  but  some  other." 


"So  with  respect  to  immortality.  As  physical 
science  states  this  problem,  it  seems  to  stand  thus : 
Is  there  any  means  of  knowing  whether  the  series 
of  states  of  consciousness,  which  has  been  casually 
associated  for  threescore  years  and  ten  with  the 
arrangement  and  movements  of  innumerable  mill- 
ions of  material  molecules,  can  be  continued  in 
like  association  with  some  substance  which  has  not 
the  properties  of  matter  and  force?  As  Kant  said, 
on  a  like  occasion,  if  anybody  can  answer  that 
question  he  is  just  the  man  I  want  to  see.  If  he 
says  that  consciousness  cannot  exist,  except  in 
relation  of  cause  and  effect  with  certain  organic 
molecules,  I  must  ask  how  he  knows  that;  and  if 
he  says  it  can,  I  must  ask  the  same  question." 

—  Professor  Huxley. 


10 


CHAPTER  II 

SiNC?E  men  have  known  anything,  they  have 
known  that  there  is  some  connection  between 
the  mind  and  the  body.  The  first  savage  who 
was  knocked  senseless  by  the  blow  of  another 
savage's  club  must  have  learned  by  that  rude 
experiment  that  a  broken  head  interrupted  or 
confused  his  thought.  One  of  the  most  amazing 
things,  however,  in  the  history  of  the  race  is  the 
way  in  which  the  significance  of  this  general 
fact  failed  to  be  recognized.  There  was  here 
one  of  those  vicious  circles  within  which  human 
thought  remains  for  ages  confined.  For  ages 
it  was  assumed  that  mind  and  body  were  two 
separate  and  independent  things,  living  to- 
gether, but  each  with  a  life  of  its  own.  The 
falsity  of  this  could  not  be  seen  until  the  true 
relation  between  them  should  be  discovered ; 
and  the  true  relation  could  not  be  seen  until 
the  erroneous  assumption  was  abandoned.  So 
the  matter  remained  from  time  immemorial 
until  the  present  century.  The  soul  was  be- 
lieved to  inhabit  the  body  as  a  tenant  dwells 
11 


12  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

in  a  house  held  upon  an  uncertain  lease.  That 
the  two  should  interact  upon  each  other  was 
no  more  thought  than  that  a  house  could  affect 
the  character  of  its  tenant.  The  sum  of  knowl- 
edge was  that  when  the  house  fell  into  decay 
or  was  broken  by  a  catastrophe,  the  tenant 
moved  away.  Aberrations  or  confusions  of 
the  mind  were  accounted  for  by  the  operations 
of  other  spirits.  Possession,  obsession,  demonia- 
cal or  spiritual  influences,  accounted  for  insan- 
ity, and  the  free  and  independent  existence  of 
the  mind  accounted  for  sanity.  It  is  true  that 
certain  emotions  were  believed  to  have  their 
seat  in  certain  organs,  as  hatred  in  the  liver,  by 
the  Greeks,  and  love  in  the  intestines,  as  by  the 
Hebrews ;  but  as  for  any  interplay  and  mutual 
dependency  between  the  soul  and  the  body,  the 
idea  never  occurred,  or  if  it  did  it  remained 
unfruitful.  It  is  hardly  more  than  a  century 
since  the  nexus  of  mind  and  body  began  to  be 
studied.  When  Hartley  announced  his  theory 
that  mental  action  was  dependent  upon  definite 
functions  of  the  brain,  he  met  with  almost  uni- 
versal incredulity.  When  Cabanis,  half  a  cen- 
tury later,  delivered  his  brutal  dictum  that  "the 
brain  secretes  thought  as  the  liver  secretes  bile," 
he  shocked  society,  not  because  he  said  a  thing 
grossly,  but  because  he  said  it  at  all.     The 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  13 

paper  read  by  Gall  before  the  French  Acad- 
emy in  1808  may  be  called  the  beginning  of 
the  science  whose  classics  Dr.  Wundt  and  Pro- 
fessor Ladd  call  "  Physiological  Psychology." 
I^ow,  it  has  become  part  of  everyday  knowl- 
edge that  mind  and  body  are  so  essentially  in- 
terrelated that  the  diverse  faculties  of  the  mind 
are  bound  up  with  certain  specific  portions  of 
the  brain  and  nervous  system.  This  is  not  only 
true  of  the  inferior  functions,  such  as  sense 
perceptions  and  physical  memory,  but  of  the 
supreme  faculties  as  well.  Says  Professor 
Haeckel,  "  Paul  Flechsig  of  Leipsio  has  proved 
that  in  the  gray  bed  of  the  brain  are  found  the 
three  seats  of  the  central  sense-organs, — touch  in 
the  vertical  lobe,  smell  in  the  frontal  lobe,  and 
sight  in  the  occipital  lobe.  Between  these  three 
sense-centres  lie  the  three  great  thought-centres 
or  centres  of  association,  the  real  organs  of  men- 
tal life.  They  are  those  highest  instruments 
of  psychic  activity  which  produce  thought  and 
consciousness."  Whatever  may  be  said  of  the 
over-fanciful  refinement  of  the  anatomist  in 
trying  to  locate  too  minutely  the  nervous  areas 
which  are  connected  with  definite  psychic 
activities,  the  general  fact  is  accepted.  We 
do  not  now  send  our  insane  to  be  exorcised. 
"We  do  not  hold  a  sick  man  morally  responsible 


14  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

for  his  mental  or  moral  vagaries.  The  whole 
world  allows  that  physical  lesion  produces  a 
state  of  mind.  But  the  implications  of  this 
admission  are  incalculable.  Dr.  Keene  reports 
this  case  to  me.  A  lad  of  fifteen  is  brought  to 
him  suffering  from  epilepsy.  He  is  a  partial 
imbecile,  slavering,  violent,  obscene,  untruth- 
ful, thievish,  a  foul  travesty  of  humanity,  —  a 
youthful  Caliban.  Certain  physical  symptoms 
point  to  a  pressure  upon  a  certain  spot  of  his 
brain.  An  unnoticed  and  forgotten  scar  con- 
firms the  diagnosis.  The  skull  is  trephined,  the 
pressure  is  removed,  and  the  epilepsy  is  cured. 
But  that  is  the  least  part  of  it.  His  obscenity, 
deceit,  and  dishonesty  are  also  cured.  Not 
seven  devils  have  been  cast  out  of  his  spirit, 
but  a  little  point  of  bone  had  been  lifted  out  of 
his  brain.  The  result  is  the  same.  But  the 
barest  recognition  of  this  fact  renders  neces- 
sary a  new  definition  of  soul.  Nor  has  the 
matter  stopped  with  a  bare  admission  that  the 
body  and  soul  are  more  closely  related  than  had 
been  supposed.  Ten  thousand  actual  experi- 
ments have  built  up  the  firm  belief  that  every 
psychic  activity,  every  sensation,  every  emo- 
tion, every  thought,  every  act  of  will  or  of 
affection,  is  correlated  with  some  definite  action 
of  the  molecules  of  some  specific  portion  of  the 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  16 

nervous  system.  The  "  soul "  has  seemingly  been 
convicted  of  false  pretences.  Instead  of  being 
an  independent  entity,  living  in  the  body  and 
dominating  it,  it  appears  to  be  but  a  convenient 
word  to  designate  the  complex  sum  total  of  the 
final  and  highest  output  of  the  organized  body. 
As  Haeckel  puts  it,  "  all  the  phenomena  of  the 
psychic  life  are  without  exception  bound  up 
with  certain  material  changes  in  the  living 
substance  of  the  body,  the  protoplasm.  We 
do  not  attribute  any  peculiar  *  essence'  to  its 
soul.  We  consider  the  psyche  to  be  merely  a 
collective  idea  of  all  the  psychic  functions  of 
protoplasm." 

This  is  the  last  word  of  science  upon 
the  soul.  Nor  can  -we  dismiss  or  disregard 
it  as  being  merely  the  ipse  dixit  of  an  ex- 
treme scientific  dogmatist.  I^o  doubt  Pro- 
fessor Ilaeckel  can  be  fairly  so  called.  But 
then  all  biologists,  all  chemists,  all  physicists, 
agree  with  him  up  to  this  point.  Whatever 
we  may  find  the  soul  to  be  over  and  above, 
this  fact  we  must  reckon  with,  that  it  is  as 
dependent  upon  matter  for  its  being  as  matter 
is  dependent  upon  it  for  its  organization.  And 
this  interdependence  of  mind  and  matter  exists 
through  every  step  in  the  range  of  living 
things.     In  the  lowest  forms  of  living  creatures 


16  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

the  whole  protoplasmic  cellular  mass  is  all  body 
and  all  mind.  Without  organs  or  differentiated 
faculties  any  portion  of  it  responds  to  any  stim- 
ulus which  may  touch  it.  In  the  next  higher 
stage  the  mind  begins  to  be  localized.  Rudi- 
mentary sense-organs  begin  to  appear,  little 
protoplasmic  filaments  and  pigment  spots  be- 
come the  forerunners  of  the  organs  of  percep- 
tion. In  another  stage  the  nervous  system 
becomes  sufficiently  organized  to  show  phe- 
nomena which  cannot  be  distinguished  from 
intelligence.  Finally,  the  highest  of  all  psychic 
action  shows  itself  by  converging  all  sensations 
upon  a  certain  specific  spot  of  the  nervous  sub- 
stance of  the  brain,  and  being  reflected  back  in 
self-consciousness.  There  is  no  break  or  gap 
or  interruption  in  the  long  series  of  evolution. 
From  the  beginning  to  the  end  physical  prog- 
ress and  psychical  progress  are  bound  up 
together.  They  do  not  seem  to  move  always 
in  parallel  lines  or  with  an  equal  pace,  but  to 
be  interrelated  parts  of  one  living,  moving, 
creeping,  climbing  life.  Organized  matter 
seems  to  be  sensitive  not  only  to  physical  force 
and  chemical  affinity,  but  to  psychic  attraction 
and  reaction,  and  these  are  not  two  distin- 
guishable and  independent  modes  of  action, 
but  in  each  kind  of  action  the  whole  of  the 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  17 

being  seems  to  be  concerned.  Mind,  or  at 
least  something  so  much  like  mind  that  their 
phenomena  cannot  be  distinguished,  seems  to 
belong  to  all  organized  matter  down  to  its  very- 
lowest  term.  Indeed,  the  highest  intellectual 
faculties  seem  to  be  but  aggregations  and  cor- 
relations of  innumerable  primary  sensations, 
and  to  be  dependent  upon  the  action  of  remote 
centres,  so  that "  memory  "  and  "  volition  "  may 
be  fairly  said  to  be  faculties  of  each  and  every 
microscopic  body-cell.  The  final  analysis  would 
seem  to  be  that  every  particular  cell  of  living 
matter  has  its  psychic  function.  The  ancient 
chasm  between  animal  and  vegetable  life  has 
been  long  since  filled  up.  The  microscope  fur- 
nished the  tool.  The  study  of  cellular  life 
provided  the  material.  Now  it  has  been  estab- 
lished that  the  animal  and  the  vegetable  are 
but  two  bifurcated  branches  of  a  tree  whose 
stem  and  roots  are  in  common.  Nor  does  inex- 
orable science  stop  there.  The  genealogy  of 
the  protoplasmic  cell  itself  has  been  traced. 
Every  multi-cellular  organism  begins  its  life  as 
a  stem-cell,  an  impregnated  ovum.  Even  at  the 
beginning  the  cell  has  a  psychic  life  of  its  own. 
But  behind  this  lie  still  simpler  cell  forms.  In 
these  we  seem  to  touch  the  point  where  the 
dead  and  the  living  meet  together.     Max  Yer- 


18  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

worn,  after  his  long  study  of  the  "Protists" 
among  the  Metazoa,  pronounces  that  in  them 
the  psychic  life  and  the  molecular  movement 
coalesce.  In  them  he  finds  "a  bridge  which 
connects  the  chemical  processes  of  the  inor- 
ganic world  with  the  psychic  life  of  the  high- 
est animals." 

Is  it  possible,  therefore,  that  that  mysterious 
and  inscrutable  thing  which  we  call  "  life "  is 
being  all  the  while  slowly  secreted,  as  it  were, 
from  inorganic  matter  in  the  secret  places  of 
the  earth  ?  May  it  be  true  that  the  old  gener- 
alization, ex  ovum  ovo^  will  have  to  be  qualified  ? 
May  Spontaneous  Generation  be  a  fact,  after 
all  ?  It  is  true  that  until  very  lately  the  scien- 
tific world  has  given  an  unanimous  negative. 
Twenty-five  years  ago  Professor  Huxley  de- 
clared that  "the  present  state  of  science  fur- 
nishes us  with  no  link  between  the  living  and 
the  not  living."  Professor  Tyndall  had  then 
demonstrated  the  faultiness  of  the  experiments 
upon  which  Dr.  Bastian  based  his  assertion  that 
he  had  evoked  life  from  inorganic  matter.  But 
since  that  time  the  chemist  and  the  biologist 
have  done  many  marvellous  things.  They  have 
not  been  able  to  transform  any  single  atom  of 
dead  matter  into  living,  nor  is  it  likely  they 
ever  will.     But  it  is  a  hasty  conclusion  that 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  19 

because  they  cannot  do  it,  it  is  never  done. 
One  may  well  hesitate  to  believe  that  the  sum 
total  of  life  has  remained  unchanged  since  the 
creation  of  the  world.  God's  laboratory  of 
nature  is  constructed  upon  an  enormously 
complex  scale.  Because  the  chemist  with  his 
vials  and  retorts  cannot  produce  life  from 
lifeless  matter  establishes  no  presumption  that 
it  is  not  being  done  continually  in  ocean's 
depth  or  in  that  boundless  region  of  the 
infinitely  little  beyond  the  ken  of  the  micro- 
scope. Above  all,  it  is  perilous  to  build  a 
philosophy  or  a  religious  faith  upon  a  founda- 
tion which  would  be  destroyed  if  the  generatio 
equivoca  should  turn  out  to  be  a  fact.  All 
that  Tyndall  and  Pasteur  have  said  is  that  no 
one  as  yet  has  produced  life  except  through 
the  agency  of  antecedent  life. 

"There,  for  the  moment,  the  matter  rests. 
But  the  end  is  not  yet.  Fauna  and  flora  are 
here,  and  thanks  to  Lemarck  and  Wallace  and 
Darwin,  their  development  through  those  sec- 
ondary causes  which  we  call  nature  has  been 
proximately  explained.  The  lowest  forms  of 
life  have  been  linked  with  the  highest  in  un- 
broken chains  of  descent.  Meantime,  through 
the  efiforts  of  chemists  and  biologists,  the  gap 
between  the  inorganic  and  the  organic  worlds, 


20  EVOLUTION  OF   IMMORTALITY 

which  once  seemed  to  be  infinite,  has  been 
constantly  narrowed.  Already  philosophy  can 
throw  a  bridge  across  the  gap.  But  experi- 
mental science,  which  builds  its  own  bridges, 
has  not  yet  spanned  the  chasm,  small  though 
it  appear.  Until  it  shall  have  done  so,  the 
bridge  of  organic  evolution  is  not  quite  com- 
plete." 

ISTo  student  of  physical  science  would  be  sur- 
prised to  learn  any  day  that  the  last  gap  had 
been  filled. 


"  Man  is  not  merely  a  mortal,  but  a  moral  being. 
If  he  sinks  below  this  plane  of  life  he  misses  the 
path  marked  out  for  him  by  all  his  past  develop- 
ment. In  order  to  progress,  the  higher  vertebrate 
had  to  subordinate  everything  to  mental  develop- 
ment. In  order  to  become  human  it  had  to  develop 
the  rational  intelligence.  In  order  to  become  higher 
man,  present  man  must  subordinate  everything  to 
moral  development.  This  is  the  great  law  of  ani- 
mal and  human  development  clearly  revealed  in  the 
sequence  of  physical  and  psychical  functions." 

—  Prof.  John  M.  Taylor. 


CHAPTER  III 

Kow  the  whole  line  of  thought  briefly 
sketched  above  is  absolutely  new.  Not  only 
were  Sts.  Paul  and  Augustine  and  Thomas 
utterly  unaware  of  the  facts  upon  which  it 
is  based,  but  so  were  Calvin  and  Jonathan 
Edwards  and  Dr.  Chalmers.  JSIo  doctrine  of 
the  resurrection  of  the  dead  or  of  the  life 
of  the  world  to  come,  formulated  even  fifty 
years  ago,  can  be  satisfactory  to  the  man  of 
to-day.  The  actual  amount  of  knowledge 
accumulated  during  those  years  concerning 
the  nature  and  laws  of  life  and  death,  of 
generation  and  decay,  of  force  and  energy, 
and  their  transformation,  is  greater  by  an 
immeasurable  increment  than  the  sum  of  all 
which  preceded.  To  refuse  to  take  account 
of  it  would  not  only  be  futile,  but  would 
write  us  down  as  less  intelligent  than  the 
Fathers,  who  availed  themselves  of  all  the 
science  they  possessed  to  elucidate  and  fortify 
their  doctrine. 

But  no  one  ought  to  overlook  or  seek  to 
28 


24  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

evade  the  fact  that  the  new  biology  and 
physics  have  overclouded  the  common  hope 
of  life  in  the  world  to  come.  The  simple 
dualism  upon  which  that  has  heretofore  been 
based  is  no  longer  believable  by  multitudes. 
The  phenomenon  of  a  human  personality  can 
no  longer  be  accounted  for  by  the  assumption 
of  a  temporary  union  of  an  immortal  soul 
with  a  perishable  body.  The  nexus  has 
been  seen  to  be  not  arbitrary  or  artificial 
or  mechanical,  but  organic.  This  conviction, 
which  cannot  be  resisted,  has  over-weighted 
and  sunk  in  many  their  belief  in  the  life  ever- 
lasting. To  not  a  few  this  has  been  a  burden 
more  heavy  than  would  be  a  judge's  doom  to 
death.  They  see  that  what  they  call  the  soul 
and  what  they  call  the  body  are  so  identified 
in  their  whole  career,  from  the  germ-cell  to  the 
grave,  that  they  cannot  any  longer  think  of  the 
psychic  personality  surviving  the  break-up  of 
the  physical  organism.  When  they  attempt  to 
do  so,  they  find  the  same  intellectual  helpless- 
ness that  they  would  if  bidden  to  think  of 
shadow  without  substance  or  extension  with- 
out form.  For  them  not  only  has  the  hope 
of  immortality  faded,  but  the  very  existence 
of  such  a  present  fact  as  a  soul  has  become 
difficult  to   believe.      So    correlated   are  psy- 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  25 

chic  and  physical  energy  that  the  soul  of 
man  threatens  to  disappear  as  an  objective 
entity. 

At  this  point  a  serious  attempt  has  been 
made  to  find  relief  by  drawing  a  line  through 
psychic  phenomena  and  labelling  those  nearest 
the  physical  basis  "  Instinct,"  and  those  higher 
up  "Keason."  This  latter,  it  is  contended, 
together  with  the  "Conscience"  or  ethical 
faculty  constitute  the  soul  proper  and  are 
peculiar  to  man.  Grant,  it  is  said,  all  that 
biology  claims  concerning  the  mental  life  of 
animals,  still,  man  is  marked  off  by  the  pos- 
session of  psychic  qualities  so  different  in  kind 
from  those  of  the  lower  creatures  that  he 
stands  unique  in  the  possession  of  a  soul. 
This  has  proven,  however,  to  be  only  a  frail 
dike  set  against  the  incoming  of  the  tide.  In 
fact  it  has  completely  broken  down  before  the 
weight  of  actual  experiment  and  observation. 
So  long  as  psychologists  confined  their  re- 
searches to  the  human  mind  this  position 
remained  tenable.  In  1760,  Reimarus  pub- 
lished his  "General  Observations  of  the  In- 
stincts of  Animals."  In  it  he  called  in  question 
the  validity  of  the  distinction  between  "in- 
stinct" and  "reason."  The  time,  however, 
was  not  ripe,  and  his  discoveries  attracted  little 


26  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMOETALITY 

attention.  But  during  the  last  forty  years 
Darwin  and  Komanes  and  Sir  John  Lubbock, 
Wundt  and  Biichner  and  Karl  Gross,  and  Ladd 
and  Moulton  and  James  and  their  colaborers 
in  America,  have  conducted  experiments  so 
abundant  and  so  careful  that  the  former  classi- 
fication of  psychic  action  into  reason  and  in- 
stinct has  been  definitely  abandoned.  Perhaps 
it  would  be  more  accurate  to  say  that  psychic 
actions  may  be  thus  distinguished,  but  that 
reason  is  not  confined  to  man  nor  instinct  to 
beasts.  For  example,  among  Indians  and  other 
savages  the  sense  of  direction  is,  so  far  as  one 
can  see,  just  as  much  an  instinct  as  it  is  in  the 
homing  pigeon.  The  faculty,  moreover,  appears 
to  be  of  the  same  kind,  and  not  differing  greatly 
in  degree.  The  wild  man  will  turn  his  face 
unerringly  toward  his  lodge,  and  with  only  a 
subordinate  regard  to  the  sun  and  the  lay  of 
the  land  will  keep  his  course  through  forest  and 
swamp,  over  mountain  and  desert,  until  he 
reaches  his  goal.  Nor  is  this  the  only  "in- 
stinct" of  man.  The  new-born  babe  knows 
how  to  suck.  The  young  mother  knows  how 
to  hold  the  babe  to  her  breast.  Sex  desires 
know  the  path  to  their  gratification.  The  eye 
knows  how  to  close  itself  against  injury  —  and 
such  like. 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  27 

But  the  important  fact  for  our  purpose  is  that 
those  higher  faculties  of  the  soul  such  as  reason, 
choice,  number,  shame,  and  duty  show  them- 
selves in  creatures  far  below  man  in  the  gradu- 
ated scale  of  being.  We  need  not  stop  to  note 
the  strange  wisdom  of  the  ant  and  the  bee, 
whose  liliputian  commonwealths  in  many  ways 
might  be  models  for  human  cities.  The  "  rea- 
son" which  they  display  shows  such  striking 
limitations  and  peculiarities  that  it  may  be  set 
aside,  if  one  choose,  as  purely  reflex  or  auto- 
matic. A  characteristic  of  reason  is  to  discern 
an  object  desired,  and  to  use  rational  and  suit- 
able means  to  attain  it.  A  very  few  instances, 
chosen  almost  at  random  from  the  mass  of 
experiment  and  observation  recorded,  will  suf- 
fice. I  begin  with  an  experiment  made  by  my- 
self. During  a  hunting  trip  I  was  in  camp  with 
a  friend  in  the  wilderness  of  the  far  North- 
west. A  mile  above  our  camp  was  a  beavers' 
dam.  We  visited  or  passed  it  almost  every  day, 
and  every  day  saw  the  marks  of  the  beavers' 
nocturnal  woodcraft.  One  day,  to  see  what 
the  inhabitants  of  the  aquatic  village  might 
do,  we  broke  a  chasm  two  feet  wide  in  the  dam 
which  backed  the  water  up  about  their  sub- 
merged houses.  Next  day  the  gap  was  mended. 
In  the  night  the  beavers  had  gone  ashore,  cut 


28  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

down  a  tree  eight  inches  in  diameter  which 
stood  more  than  a  hundred  feet  away  from  the 
stream.  The  trunk  of  the  tree  was  of  no  use 
for  their  purposes.  They  felled  it  to  procure 
the  small  limbs  which  grew  twenty  feet  from 
the  ground.  The  chips  showed  that  they  had 
cut  the  limbs  where  they  lay  into  pieces  of  the 
proper  length  to  mend  the  hole  in  their  dam 
thirty  yards  distant.  Each  stick  was  just  suf- 
ficiently long  to  reach  across  the  break  and 
allow  enough  to  lap  over  and  hold  at  either 
end.  These  they  had  put  in  place,  and  inter- 
laced with  smaller  twigs,  tamped  with  earth 
and  leaves,  so  that  the  dam  was  good  as  new. 
Now,  note  what  they  had  done.  First  they  sur- 
veyed the  break,  and  saw  how,  and  how  alone,  it 
could  be  mended.  Then  they  sought  the  suitable 
material  for  the  repairs.  Then  they  cut  down 
a  tree  for  the  purpose  of  securing  the  limbs 
which  were  in  sight,  but  not  within  reach  of 
animals  who  could  not  climb.  Then  they 
ascertained  the  length  required  for  the  pieces 
they  wished.  Then  they  cut  them  off  in  situ, 
and  carried  them  to  where  they  were  needed. 
The  ultimate  purpose  of  it  all  was  to  save  the 
doors  of  their  houses  from  being  exposed  by 
the  drawing  off  of  the  water.  In  what  way  then 
does  this  differ  in  hind  from  the  reason  of  a 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  29 

man  who  builds  a  house  ?  The  whole  perform- 
ance seemed  to  us  so  amazing  and  incredible  that 
to  eliminate  the  possibility  of  accident  we  re- 
peated it  three  times  upon  that  hapless  village, 
and  always  with  the  same  result. 

Take  another  instance,  quoted  and  verified 
by  Romanes  from  Thompson.  In  his  camp 
in  the  jungle  of  Tillicherry  he  had  a  monkey 
tied  to  a  long  upright  bamboo  pole  by  a  chain 
running  on  a  ring,  which  allowed  the  monkey 
to  climb  to  the  top,  where  was  a  seat  upon 
which  he  spent  most  of  his  time.  While  he 
sat  here,  the  thievish  crows,  which  swarmed 
about,  stole  his  food,  which  was  placed  every 
morning  at  the  foot  of  his  pole.  To  this  he 
had  vainly  expressed  his  dislike  by  chattering 
and  slipping  down  in  vain  effort  to  catch  them. 
"  One  morning,  however,  he  appeared  to  be 
seriously  ill,  he  closed  his  eyes,  dropped  his 
head,  and  exhibited  other  evidences  of  severe 
suffering.  No  sooner  were  his  ordinary  rations 
placed  at  the  foot  of  the  bamboo  than  the 
crows,  watching  their  opportunity,  descended 
in  great  numbers,  and  according  to  their  usual 
custom  began  to  demolish  his  provisions.  The 
monkey  now  began  to  descend  the  pole  by  slow 
degrees  as  though  the  effort  overpowered  him, 
and  as  if  so  overcome  by  indisposition  that  his 


80  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

remaining  strength  was  hardly  equal  to  the 
exertion.  When  he  reached  the  ground,  he 
rolled  about  for  some  time,  seeming  in  great 
agony,  until  he  found  himself  close  to  the  ves- 
sel where  the  crows  had  by  this  time  well-nigh 
devoured  his  food.  There  he  lay  apparently 
in  a  state  of  complete  insensibility.  After  a 
little  a  crow  plucked  up  courage  to  approach 
and  stretch  its  neck  toward  the  food.  But  the 
watchful  avenger  seized  it  with  the  rapidity  of 
thought  and  secured  it  from  doing  further  mis- 
chief. He  now  began  to  chatter  and  grin  with 
every  expression  of  gratified  triumph,  while 
the  crows  flew  around,  cawing,  as  if  deprecat- 
ing the  chastisement  about  to  be  inflicted  upon 
the  captive  brother.  The  monkey  continued 
for  a  while  to  chatter  and  grin  in  triumph ;  he 
then  deliberately  placed  the  crow  between  his 
knees,  and  began  to  pluck  it  with  the  most 
humorous  gravity.  When  he  had  completely 
stripped  it,  except  of  the  larger  feathers  in 
the  wings  and  tail,  he  flung  it  into  the  air 
from  where  it  fell  to  the  ground  with  a  stun- 
ning shock.  He  then  ascended  his  pole,  and 
the  next  time  his  food  was  brought,  not  a  sin- 
gle crow  approached  it."  ISTow,  in  what  essen- 
tial particular  was  the  mental  action  of  this 
monkey  different  from  that  of  a  farmer,  with 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMOKTALITY  81 

some  sense  of  humor,  who  sets  a  trap  for  the 
crows  devouring  his  corn  ? 

Once  again,  selecting  from  that  treasure- 
house  of  facts  gathered  by  Darwin.  "A 
troop  of  baboons  were  observed  crossing  a 
valley  in  Abyssinia.  Some  had  already  as- 
cended the  opposite  mountain,  and  some  were 
still  in  the  valley,  when  the  latter  were  attacked 
by  dogs,  but  the  old  males  immediately  hurried 
down  from  the  rocks,  with  mouths  open,  roar- 
ing so  fearfully  that  the  dogs  quickly  drew 
back.  They  were  again  encouraged  to  the 
attack,  but  by  this  time  all  the  baboons  had 
reascended  the  heights  excepting  a  young  child 
of  about  six  months,  who,  loudly  calling  for 
aid,  climbed  on  a  block  of  rock  and  was  sur- 
rounded. Thereupon,  one  of  the  largest  males 
came  down  again  from  the  mountain,  slowly 
went  to  the  young  one,  coaxed  him  down,  and 
carried  him  away,  the  dogs  being  too  much 
astonished  to  make  an  attack."  In  what  does 
the  action  of  the  baboon  differ  in  kind  from 
that  supreme  moral  sense  which  moves  its 
possessor  to  imperil  his  life  for  his  brother? 

Such  facts  as  the  above  might  be  quoted  to 
fill  volumes  from  that  mass  of  literature  upon 
the  subject  which  has  been  accumulated  within 
a  generation.      One,  however,  is  as  good  as  a 


32  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

thousand.  The  effect  of  them  all  has  been  to 
establish  the  truth  of  the  generalization  made 
by  Darwin  forty  years  ago.  "  The  difference 
in  mind  between  man  and  the  higher  animals, 
great  as  it  is,  is  certainly  one  of  degree  and 
not  of  kind.  The  senses  and  instincts,  the 
various  emotions  and  faculties,  of  which  man 
boasts,  may  be  found  in  an  incipient,  or  even 
sometimes  in  a  well-developed,  condition  in  the 
lower  animals."  And  Mr.  Darwin  lies,  without 
protest,  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

No :  the  new  science  and  the  new  philosophy 
for  which  his  name  may  well  stand  as  a  symbol 
has  been  accepted,  not  only  by  the  world  of 
science,  but  by  the  religious  world  as  well.  We 
have  reached  the  point  where  the  old  phrases 
"immortality  of  the  soul"  and  "resurrection 
of  the  body"  must  take  on  new  meanings  if 
they  are  to  be  comprehended,  and  must  deal 
with  new  difficulties  if  they  are  to  be  retained. 
If  the  truth  which  these  phrases  have  hereto- 
fore expressed  sufficiently  well  is  to  be  kept 
alive  among  men,  its  roots  must  be  traced  to 
a  reason  immeasurably  deeper  down  in  the 
nature  of  things  than  is  generally  realized.  If 
it  be  the  fact,  as  it  seems  to  be,  that  belief  in 
a  future  life  is  being  given  up  by  intelligent 
men,  we  may  be  assured  that  it  is  not  because 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITT  33 

the  "  instinct  of  living "  is  any  less  strong  in 
them  than  in  their  forefathers.  It  is  not  that 
they  desire  life  less,  or  because  they  are  more 
willing  to  be  resolved  into  nothingness.  It  is 
because  their  hope  has  met  defeat  at  the  hands 
of  other  truth  which  has  slowly  shown  itself. 
There  are  multitudes  for  whom  neither  the  old 
phrases  nor  the  old  arguments  will  any  longer 
suffice.  To  clear  these  away  is  an  ungracious 
and  distasteful  task.  They  are  so  intertwined 
with  religious  sentiment  and  human  affection 
that  to  disturb  them  seems  to  some  little  short 
of  wanton  outrage.  They  are  formulated  in 
creeds,  enshrined  in  poetry,  hymns,  and  liturgies. 
They  are  ingrained  in  the  very  fibre  of  religious 
faith  and  are  powerful  sanctions  for  conduct. 
Why  disturb  them  ?  The  only  answer  is,  it 
is  always  best  in  the  long  run  to  know  the 
truth.  It  is  better  that  the  simple  Christian 
within  the  Church  should  have  his  beliefs  dis- 
turbed than  that  his  brother  should  be  shut 
out  of  the  Kingdom  by  those  beliefs.  It  is  not 
only  better  intrinsically,  but  it  is  also  the  mind 
of  Christ,  and  was  His  way.  The  little  ones 
whom  IIo  warned  against  offending  were  those 
who  were  kept  out  of  the  Kingdom  by  the 
inconsiderate  action  of  those  within.  We  need 
have  no  fear  that  belief  in  "  the  resurrection  of 


34  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

the  dead,  and  the  life  of  the  world  to  come  " 
will  be  abandoned,  provided  only  it  be  conceived 
of  in  such  a  way  as  will  permit  it  to  be  cor- 
related with  all  else  which  we  know  to  be 
true. 


"  Evolution  may  be  conceived  of  as  resulting  in 
beings  capable  of  proposing  to  themselves  a  certain 
aim,  and  of  dragging  nature  after  them  toward  it. 
Natural  selection  would  thus  finally  be  converted 
into  a  moral,  and,  in  some  sort,  divine  selection. 
It  can,  in  effect,  produce  species  and  types  superior 
to  humanity  as  we  know  it;  it  is  not  probable  that 
we  embody  the  highest  achievement  possible  in 
life,  thought,  and  love.  Who  knows,  indeed,  but 
that  evolution  may  be  able  to  bring  forth,  nay, 
has    not    already  brought    forth    immortals?" 

—  M.  GUYAU. 


86 


CHAPTER  IT 

Two  things  are  usually  taken  for  granted  in 
all  discussions  concerning  future  life.  One  is 
the  essential  immortality  of  the  soul.  The 
other  is  that  the  same  kind  and  quality  of  soul 
is  common  to  all  men.  Are  these  assumptions 
defensible  ?  To  merely  raise  the  question  will 
seem  preposterous  to  some.  Nevertheless,  the 
question  must  be  faced.  For  the  present  I 
postpone  any  attempt  to  define  sharply  the 
term  soul,  and  use  it  in  its  popular  sense,  which 
is  for  this  stage  of  the  argument  sufficiently 
definite. 

It  is  commonly  assumed  that  each  individual 
soul  has  had  a  beginning,  but  is  so  consti- 
tuted and  compounded  of  such  stuff  that  it  is 
intrinsically  imperishable.  This  belief  lies  at 
the  bottom  of  the  current  conceptions  of  Judg- 
ment, Heaven,  and  Hell.  To  many  it  will  be 
a  surprise  to  be  assured  that  this  is  not  a  Chris- 
tian doctrine  at  all,  but  a  pagan  one.  Nor  is 
it  now,  nor  has  it  ever  been,  the  general  belief 
even  in  paganism.  The  great  mass  of  savage 
87 


38  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

and  semicivilized  men  have  never  had  any 
clear  opinion  upon  the  matter  either  way. 
Indeed,  they  do  not  think  of  "  the  soul "  at  all 
in  the  way  we  do.  They  often  have  a  sort  of 
vague  notion  of  a  shadowy  double  of  the  in- 
dividual which  may  for  a  while  fiit  about  his 
tomb  or  roam  in  happy  hunting  grounds.  But 
they  do  not  possess  any  such  abstract  concep- 
tions as  "eternal,"  or  "immortal,"  or  "self- 
existent."  When  they  advance  farther  in  the 
path  of  thought  they  either  think  of  the  per- 
sonality maintaining  a  kind  of  family,  corpor- 
ate perpetuity,  as  throughout  Eastern  Asia 
generally ;  or  else  they  think  of  the  individual 
as  seeking  to  lose  his  identity,  and  finally  los- 
ing it  in  Nirvana,  which,  for  the  individual 
consciousness  at  any  rate,  is  an  end  of  being. 
The  general  thought  of  intelligent  paganisni 
could  hardly  be  better  stated  or  by  a  more 
competent  witness  than  Wu  Ting  Fang,  the 
present  Chinese  Ambassador  to  the  United 
States. 

"  What  I  understand  by  religion  is  a  system 
and  doctrine  of  worship.  As  such  it  recognizes 
the  existence  of  a  divine  supreme  being  and  of 
spirits  having  control  of  human  destinies,  who 
want  to  bring  man  back  from  the  errors  of  his 
ways  by  holding  up  the  fear  of  everlasting 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  39 

punishment  to  him,  and  by  promising  him  ever- 
lasting happiness  for  goodness.  One  of  its  car- 
dinal doctrines  is  that  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  life  after  death.  I  must  confess  that  the 
thought  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul  is  pleas- 
ant. I  wish  it  were  true ;  but  all  the  reasoning 
of  Plato  cannot  make  it  anything  more  than  a 
strong  probability.  I  am  not  aware  that  in  the 
advance  of  modern  science  we  have  advanced 
one  step  more  from  uncertainty  than  did  Plato. 
It  must  not  be  said  that  Confucius  denies  the 
existence  of  these  things,  but  regards  all  specu- 
lation upon  them  as  useless  and  impracticable. 
He  would  be  called  an  agnostic  in  these  days. 

*  What  is  death  ? '  asked  a  disciple  of  him,  and 
he  replied,  *You  don't  know  life  yet;  how 
can  you  know  about  death?'  Such  are  the 
guarded  words  of  Confucius  on  this  subject. 
Life  itself  is  full  of  mysteries  too  deep  for 
human  thought  to  fathom.  There  is  no  use  in 
trying  to  tear  apart  the  veil  of  death  to  take 
a  peep  at  the  place  beyond.  No  one  has  ever 
been  able  to  add  one  tittle  of  evidence  concern- 
ing the  future  of  man  after  death  and  of  the 
world  of  spirits.  Confucius  was  therefore  right 
in  dismissing  these  subjects  without  giving  a 
direct   answer.      Horace   Greeley   once   said : 

*  Those  who  discharge  promptly  and  faithfully 


40  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

all  their  duties  to  those  who  still  live  in  the 
flesh  can  have  but  little  time  left  for  peering 
into  the  life  beyond  the  grave.  It  is  better  to 
attend  to  each  in  its  proper  order.'  This  is 
not  an  unfair  statement  of  the  aim  of  Confu- 
cius. Confucianism  undertakes  to  guide  man 
only  through  this  world.  His  system  is  accord- 
ingly intensely  human  and  practical.  He  does 
not  speculate  upon  what  will  be  after  death." 

The  fact  is  that  only  in  Christendom  and 
Islam  is  the  essential  immortality  of  the 
individual  spirit  assumed.  To  the  contention 
that  belief  in  eternal  life  has  been  held  always 
and  everywhere,  and  by  all  men,  the  only 
reply  is  that  the  facts  are  not  so.  It  is  as 
far  as  possible  from  being  true  to-day.  The 
overwhelming  majority  of  men  are  now,  as 
has  always  been  the  case,  at  too  low  a 
stage  of  intellectual  development  to  com- 
prehend the  thought.  The  most  that  can  be 
said  is  that  there  is  among  most  people  a 
rather  vague  and  incoherent  belief  that  a  tenu- 
ous kind  of  existence  of  the  individual  will 
continue  for  a  greater  or  longer  period  after 
death.  But  it  is  at  its  clearest  only  a  phantom- 
like being,  and  they  do  not  conceive  of  it  as 
eternal,  nor  does  the  term  eternal  convey  any 
meaning  to  them.     Moreover,  the  testimony 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  41 

of  the  most  trustworthy  observer  is  that  from 
among  many  peoples  this  whole  set  of  ideas 
is  entirely  absent.  The  Bushman  of  South 
Africa,  the  Yeddahs  of  Ceylon,  the  Blacks 
of  Australia,  the  Diggers  of  Utah,  and  such 
like  do  not  seem  to  have  any  more  idea  of  a 
post-obituary  existence  than  do  the  beasts  of 
the  field.  Indeed,  the  history  of  thought  wit- 
nesses, as  clearly  as  it  can  witness  to  anything, 
that  it  is  not  until  a  really  high  stage  of  intel- 
lectual development  is  reached  that  the  idea 
of  any  future  life  emerges,  and  that  a  belief  in 
the  soul  as  a  self-existent  entity  is  not  reached 
until  intellection  has  well-nigh  reached  its  sum- 
mit. Not  until  Democritus  and  Empedocles, 
and  Plato  and  Socrates,  and  Epicurus  and  Sen- 
eca, become  possible  does  the  idea  of  immortal- 
ity emerge.  At  a  date  no  doubt  much  earlier, 
the  Egyptians  had  wrought  out  scientifically 
their  scheme  of  the  future  life ;  but  they  by  no 
means  predicated  it  of  all  men,  but  only  of  the 
"good,"  and  of  those  only  after  they  had  been 
rendered  immortal  by  union  with  Osiris  at  the 
trial  to  which  each  departed  one  was  at  once 
introduced.  The  "  evil "  who  failed  in  the  test 
perished  out  of  existence  either  at  once,  or  after 
a  lengthened  agony.  Among  the  early  He- 
brews the  idea  was  hardly  present  at  all.     Says 


42  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Grand  Rabbi  Stein  :  "  What  causes  most  surprise 
in  reading  the  Pentateuch  is  the  silence  it  seems 
to  keep  respecting  the  most  fundamental  and 
consoling  truths.  The  doctrine  of  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul  and  the  resurrection  of  the 
body  are  able  powerfully  to  fortify  man  against 
passion  and  vice,  and  to  strengthen  his  steps  in 
the  rugged  paths  of  virtue.  But  one  searches 
in  vain  for  these  truths  which  he  desires  so 
ardently.  He  does  not  find  either  them  or  the 
simple  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  the  dead." 
Among  the  later  Jews,  the  contemporaries  of 
Jesus,  the  notions  concerning  the  soul  and  its 
destiny  were  so  incoherent  and  contradictory 
that  it  seems  hopeless  to  attempt  their  recon- 
struction. Speaking  broadly,  they  did  not  con- 
ceive of  the  soul  as  an  entity  separate  and 
independent  of  the  body.  The  dream  of  a 
corporate  or  tribal  immortality  which  they 
had  held  for  ages  before  their  eyes  had  for  the 
most  part  rendered  them  careless  concerning 
the  destiny  of  the  individual.  If  "  Israel "  were 
to  abide  to  the  ages  of  ages  it  mattered  little 
what  became  of  his  children  one  by  one.  The 
most  intelligent  and  influential  section,  the 
Sadducees,  were  frank  materialists.  They  be- 
lieved "neither  in  angels  nor  demons  nor  the 
resurrection  of  the  dead."     The  Pharisees  were 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALriY  43 

divided  into  paltry  schools,  and  were  busy 
debating  such  trivial  puzzles  as  to  Avhether  or 
not  one  should  rise  with  his  clothes  or  naked, 
whether  he  would  burrow  like  a  mole  under- 
neath the  earth  so  as  to  rise  in  the  sacred  soil 
of  Judea,  or  rise  in  pagan  soil  and  be  instantly 
rapt  through  the  air  to  the  holy  land.  But 
none  believed  in  or  expected  resurrection  or 
immortality  for  any  but  the  members  of  the 
chosen  race.  An  immortality  belonging  to 
man,  and  based  upon  the  essential  deathless- 
ness  of  the  soul,  was  utterly  foreign  to  their 
thought.  Dr.  Piepenbring  states  their  belief 
thus : — 

"Along  with  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  dead  which  arose  and  was  devel- 
oped among  the  Palestinian  Jews,  we  see  the 
doctrine  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul  take 
shape  among  the  Jews  of  Alexandria.  It  ap- 
pears for  the  first  time  in  the  apocryphal  book 
of  Wisdom.  According  to  this  book  souls  pre- 
exist, and  are  confined  in  the  body  as  in  a 
prison.  The  souls  of  the  righteous  are  in  the 
hands  of  God ;  after  having  passed  through 
the  crucible  of  trial  they  shine,  they  judge 
nations,  they  govern  peoples ;  thus  the  righteous 
will  live  forever.  The  wicked  seem  to  be  fated 
to  annihilation.    These  ideas  are  still  farther 


44  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMOETALITY 

developed  by  Philo,  from  whose  writings  it 
clearly  appears  that  they  were  borrowed  from 
Plato." 

I  pass  over  now  the  teaching  of  Christ  and 
the  ]^ew  Testament.  That  must  form  the 
basis  of  the  truth  we  seek  later  on,  and  must  be 
examined  more  at  leisure.  The  question  to  be 
asked  at  present  is,  What  did  the  people  of  the 
early  Christian  Church,  say  during  the  first  four 
hundred  years,  believe  generally  concerning  the 
soul  and  its  possible  destiny  ?  We  need  not  be 
surprised  to  find  that  their  beliefs  were  confused 
and  contradictory.  No  matter  what  the  teach- 
ing of  Christ  may  or  may  not  have  been,  the 
early  Christians  came  to  it  with  presuppositions 
and  habits  of  thought  already  formed.  It  is 
never  possible  for  any  man  to  disentangle  him- 
self at  once  from  his  old  beliefs  in  taking  in  a 
new  truth.  The  most  that  he  can  do  is  to  mod- 
ify those  previous  convictions  of  his  which  seem 
to  lie  in  immediate  contact  with  the  new  truth. 
But  underneath  those  there  is  the  whole  con- 
tents of  bis  mind.  The  new  truth  sinks  down 
amongst  these  and  is  colored  by  them.  When 
he  tries  to  express  the  truth  which  he  has  newly 
received,  he  can  only  do  so  in  the  language  and 
thoughts  which  he  already  possesses.  It  re- 
quires long  time  for  the  new  ideas  either  to 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  46 

work  over  to  its  own  uses  the  old  mental  forms, 
or  to  escape  from  them  by  building  up  an  en- 
tirely new  imagery  about  itself.  The  teaching 
of  Christ  could  not  escape  this  inevitable  neces- 
sity. This  is  strikingly  true  of  the  Christian 
ideas  concerning  the  significance  of  His  own 
sufferings  and  death.  These  occurred  in  Judea 
and  were  recorded  by  Jews,  but  in  being  trans- 
mitted through  Hebrew  minds  they  received  a 
Hebrew  coloring  which  to  a  large  extent  they 
still  retain.  The  Great  Surrender  was  inter- 
preted in  Hebrew  sacrificial  terms.  The  Light 
of  the  world  shone  out  through  the  stained 
windows  of  the  temple  of  Judaism.  This  re- 
fraction and  discoloration  must  be  allowed  for 
by  the  world  which  would  see  the  Sun  in  his 
glory.  The  same  fact  is  of  even  more  signifi- 
cance in  the  case  of  the  early  Christian  belief 
concerning  the  belief  in  personal  immortal- 
ity. Both  Greek  and  Roman  preconceptions 
affected  this  as  well  as  Hebrew  ones.  A  care- 
ful study  of  the  ante-Nicene  "  Fathers  "  can  but 
convince  one  that  in  and  among  them  a  number 
of  ethnic  notions  were  struggling  to  express, 
each  in  its  own  terms,  the  truth  which  Christ 
had  dropped  among  them.  The  early  Chris- 
tians had  all  been  reared  either  in  the  religions 
of  Judea  or  Greece  or  Rome.     Those  among 


46  EVOLUTION  OF   IMMORTALITY 

them  who  had  been  reared  Jews  unconsciously 
transferred  their  idea  of  a  corporate  or  tribal 
immortality  from  their  old  faith  to  their  new, 
and  their  imaginations  were  filled  with  the 
hope  of  a  "  Second  Coming  "  and  a  "  Kew  Jeru- 
salem." Those  who  were  Greeks  brought  to 
the  new  religion  the  Platonic  idea  that  the 
individual  soul  is  indestructible,  being  in  fact 
an  articulate  portion  of  the  substance  of  the 
mind  of  God.  Those  of  Eoman  antecedents, 
having  no  inherited  belief  in  a  future  life  of 
any  kind,  were  better  prepared  to  comprehend 
the  truth  of  Christ.  The  interaction  of  all  these 
fragments  of  previous  philosophy  produced  a 
confusion  and  uncertainty  of  mind  which  was 
not  clarified  for  five  centuries.  Then  the  mas- 
terful Augustine,  the  man  who  fixed  the 
lines  in  which  the  thought  of  the  civilized 
world  ran  from  the  sixth  century  to  the  nine- 
teenth, took  Plato's  doctrine  of  the  inherent 
immortality  of  the  soul,  disengaged  it  from 
metempsychosis  and  transmigration,  and  gained 
for  it  that  general  credence  which  it  has  held 
to  this  day.  Clement  (I.  Epis.  xxvi.)  teaches 
the  resurrection  of  the  good,  and  proves  it  by 
an  appeal  to  the  well-known  phenomenon  of 
the  phoenix  rising  from  his  ashes,  but  seems 
to  have  no  expectation  of  future  life  for  the 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  47 

wicked.  Justin  Martyr  in  one  place  (I.  Ajpol. 
xvii.)  expects  the  resurrection  both  of  just  and 
unjust,  and  proves  it  by  appealing  to  the  recog- 
nized fact  that  departed  human  souls  are  even 
now  in  a  state  of  sensation,  as  is  shown  by  their 
being  evoked  by  magi  and  dream-senders,  as  well 
as  at  the  oracles  of  Dodona  and  Pytho.  In 
another  place,  however  {Dial.  Tryph.  v.),  he 
expressly  denounces  and  dismisses  the  Platonic 
doctrine  that  the  soul  is  immortal.  Athenago- 
ras  {De  Resurrec.)  takes  for  granted  unquali- 
fiedly the  native  immortality  of  the  soul,  and 
makes  a  striking  argument  for  the  resurrection 
of  the  body.  Tertullian  in  his  treatises  On  the 
Soul  and  On  the  Resurrection  of  the  Flesh 
gives  by  far  the  fullest  presentation  of  what 
was  commonly  believed  in  his  circles ;  but  it  is 
quite  impossible  to  make  him  consistent  with 
himself  or  with  other  Christian  writers  of  the 
same  period.  Upon  the  whole,  however,  he 
leaves  the  impression,  afterward  confirmed  and 
fixed  by  Augustine,  that  he  believes  the  soul  to 
have  an  independent  existence  of  its  own,  and 
to  be  of  its  own  nature  indestructible.  The 
truth  of  the  case  seems  to  be  that  as  the  Greek 
influence  gained  the  domination  in  the  early 
Church  the  Platonic  doctrine  of  a  natural  im- 
mortality which  it  brought  with  it  came  to  be 


48  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

accepted.  The  notion  was  withstood  from  the 
beginning  as  being  subversive  of  the  very  essence 
of  Christianity.  Theophilus  {Ad.  Autolyoum 
ii.  27),  Irenaeus  {Adv.  Ilceres.  ii.  34),  Clement 
of  Alexandria  {The  Pedagogues,  i.  3),  Arnobius 
{Cont.  Gent.  ii.  24),  and,  most  weighty  of  all, 
Athanasius  in  his  treatise  on  the  Incarnation 
of  the  Word  of  God,  all  strenuously  fought 
against  it  as  a  pagan  error  which  brought  to 
naught  the  work  of  Christ.  They  were  de- 
feated, however,  and  the  conception  prevailed 
which  is  vulgarly  current  to-day,  of  an  immor- 
tal soul  and  a  mortal  body,  temporarily  joined, 
then  severed,  then  reunited  in  an  imperishable 
personality.  Its  currency  has  probably  confused 
and  obstructed  the  work  of  Christ  among  men 
more  than  all  other  obstacles  combined.  A 
pagan  speculation  has  masqueraded  so  long  as  an 
elemental  Christian  truth  that  now,  when  the 
intelligent  world  is  well  disposed  to  receive  and 
comprehend  Jesus'  revelation  of  the  life  to 
come,  Plato  stands  across  the  path  and  is  com- 
monly mistaken  for  Christ. 


"  Whenever  any  scientific  revolution  has  driven 
out  old  modes  of  thought,  the  new  views  that  take 
their  place  must  justify  themselves  by  the  perma- 
nent or  increasing  satisfaction  which  they  are 
capable  of  affording  to  those  spiritual  demands 
which  cannot  be  put  off  or  ignored."  —  Lotze. 


60 


CHAPTEK  y 

It  has  been  taken  for  granted  during  ages 
that  "  Man "  occupies  a  unique  and  solitary 
place  at  the  head  of  the  rank  of  living  things, 
with  a  wide,  if  not  impassable,  chasm  between 
him  and  them.  For  the  purposes  of  the  nat- 
uralist this  is  satisfactory.  But  for  the  pur- 
poses of  the  psychologist  it  is  quite  misleading. 
The  classification  rests  upon  physical  data  solely. 
Psychic  phenomena  disregard  it  utterly.  For 
example :  — 

"  There  are  races  of  existing  men  whose 
powers  of  language  seem  still  in  the  transi- 
tion stage  between  articulate  and  inarticulate 
speech.  This  seems  to  be  the  case  with  the 
Bushmen  and  Hottentots  of  South  Africa,  whose 
vocal  utterances  consist  largely  of  a  series  of 
peculiar  clicks  that  are  certainly  not  articulate 
speech,  though  on  the  road  toward  it.  The 
Pygmies  of  Central  Africa  seem  similarly  to 
occupy  an  intermediate  position  in  the  develop- 
ment of  language.  Those  who  have  endeavored 
to  talk  with  them  speak  of  their  utterance  as 
51 


52  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

being  inarticulate  sound.  It  appears  to  be  a 
sort  of  link  between  inarticulate  and  articulate 
speech.  In  short,  the  great  abyss  which  was 
of  old  thought  to  lie  between  the  language  of 
man  and  that  of  the  lower  animals  has  largely 
vanished  through  the  labors  of  philologists,  and 
we  can  trace  stepping-stones  over  every  portion 
of  the  wide  gap."  ^ 

The  same  thing  we  have  above  seen  to  be 
true  concerning  reason,  memory,  sympathy, 
and  love.  The  simple  fact  is  that  in  the  at- 
tempt to  trace  the  origin,  development,  and 
destiny  of  the  soul  the  naturalist's  classification 
of  "  man  "  and  "  animal "  must  be  disregarded. 
In  advance  one  dare  not  say  w^here  the  line 
between  immortal  and  mortal  creatures  will  be 
found.  It  may  conceivably  coincide  with  the 
one  which  marks  off  Genius  Homo :  Class  Mam- 
malia: Order  Primates,  or  it  may  be  found  to 
run  much  below  that,  so  as  to  include  many  of 
man's  humble  kinsmen.  Or  it  may  be  found 
necessary  to  settle  upon  a  line  running  irregu- 
larly through  and  amidst  the  ranks  of  man.  The 
soul  has  its  own  laws  and  announces  its  own 
requirements.  It  may  turn  out  that  all  whom 
we  call  men  are  not  Man.  For  natural  science  it 
is  true  that  "  God  hath  made  of  one  blood  all 
1  Morris,  "  Man  and  his  Ancestor,"  p.  110. 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  53 

nations  of  men  for  to  dwell  upon  the  earth." 
They  breed  together,  and  that  settles  the  ques- 
tion of  physical  relationship.  But  there  are 
psychic  relationships  between  man  and  animal 
quite  as  intimate  and  as  real  as  the  physical 
connection  of  man  with  man.  Measured  by 
psychic  standards,  the  interval  between  the 
lowest  man  and  the  highest  is  a  hundred  fold 
greater  than  that  between  the  lowest  man  and 
the  highest  brute.  It  may  be  humiliating,  but  it 
is  true,  nevertheless,  that  we  are  far  more  closely 
related  to  the  animals  on  the  spiritual  than  we 
are  on  the  bodily  side.  A  comparative  anatomist 
would  distinguish  at  sight  between  the  fossil 
bone  of  a  man  and  one  of  a  fossil  ape.  But 
let  a  certain  action  involving  thought  be  de- 
scribed to  him,  and  he  may  be  quite  unable  to 
say  whether  the  actors  are  men  or  beasts.  For 
example,  here  is  one  related  by  James  Forbes 
in  his  "  Oriental  Memoirs  "  :  — 

"  One  of  tlie  females  had  been  killed  and  the 
body  carried  to  our  tent.  Forty  or  fifty  of  the 
tribe  soon  gathered  around  the  tent,  chattering 
furiously  and  threatening  an  attack,  from  which 
they  were  only  diverted  by  the  display  of  the 
guns,  whose  effects  they  perfectly  understood. 
But  while  the  others  retreated  the  leader  stood 
his  ground,  continuing  his  threatening  chatter. 


64  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Finding  this  of  no  avail,  he  came  to  the  door 
of  the  tent  alone,  moaning  sadly,  and  by  his 
gestures  seemed  to  beg  for  the  dead  body. 
When  it  was  given  him  he  took  it  up  sorrow- 
fully in  his  arms  and  carried  it  away  to  his 
waiting  companions."  Is  this  a  story  of  mon- 
keys or  of  men  ? 

What  we  are  seeking  is  a  spiritual  organism 
which  would  be  at  once  worth  keeping  perma- 
nently in  existence,  and  which  has  been  suffi- 
ciently developed  to  cohere  through  and  after 
the  shock  of  the  dissolution  of  its  physical  basis. 
If  we  must  predicate  immortality  of  every  sen- 
tient being  which  possesses  reason,  affection,  and 
ethical  faculty,  then  we  must  enlarge  the  bor- 
ders of  Hades  to  receive  innumerable  animals. 
If  we  demand  a  higher  psychic  basis  to  make 
continuous  existence  possible,  then  we  may  well 
be  forced  to  deny  it  to  multitudes  of  beings 
whom  we  call  men.  There  has  seemed  to  be 
no  deliverance  from  this  dilemma,  because  we 
have  assumed  that  the  naturalist's  classification 
of  man  and  animal,  which  is  real  in  the  physi- 
cal realm,  is  also  valid  in  the  psychic  sphere.  It 
is  difficult  to  see  any  sufficient  reason  for  con- 
tinuing this  contention  any  longer.  While  it 
was  believed  that  all  mankind  were  the  chil- 
dren of  a  single  pair,  specially  created,  only  a 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  55 

few  thousand  years  ago,  the  difficulty  was  in- 
superable. But  now  we  know  better.  Geology 
has  unfolded  the  rocky  leaves  of  earth's  history 
and  found  man's  mark  inscribed  aeons  since. 
His  descent  from  pre-human  and  semi-human 
ancestry  is  as  well  established  as  any  human 
belief  can  ever  be.  To  say  that  "  Evolution  is 
not  proven"  is  simply  trifling  with  truth. 
Nothing  is  ever  proven  or  can  be  in  the  sense 
which  that  objection  demands.  But  it  is  so 
generally  accepted  that  the  world  of  thought 
and  knowledge  has  ceased  even  to  defend  it. 
Why  it  should  be  challenged  and  resisted  it  is 
not  easy  to  understand.  Probably  it  is  because 
it  seems  to  run  counter  to  a  set  of  beliefs  which 
have  been  read  into  Holy  Scripture.  That  an- 
cient and  marvellous  story  of  Genesis  greatly 
needs  to  be  rescued  from  its  friends.  Read  it 
afresh,  and  see  how  generally  it  corresponds  to 
the  facts  as  they  are  now  known  to  be.  It  is 
the  record  of  a  series  of  selections  and  rejec- 
tions, determined  in  the  interest  of  the  slowly 
developing  ethical  family.  Jacob  is  selected 
because  righteousness  continues  in  his  line,  and 
Esau  is  rejected.  Abraham  is  selected,  and  all 
the  splendid  civilization  of  the  great  plain  is 
allowed  to  fade  from  sight  and  being.  Noah 
is  chosen,  and  the  corrupt  race  of  Tubal  and 


56  EVOLUTION  OF   IMMORTALITY 

Jubal  are  allowed  to  pass  away  to  the  music  of 
their  own  harps  and  the  clinking  of  their  own 
anvils.  Cain  and  the  City  which  he  builded  go 
out  in  darkness,  and  Seth,  in  whose  line  good- 
ness grows,  is  chosen.  What  else  is  "  Adam  " 
but  "a  man,"  in  whom  spiritual  faculty  first 
rose  to  the  capacity  to  know  good  and  evil? 
That  he  was  the  first  and  only  creature  of  his 
kind  upon  the  earth  the  story  in  no  wise  inti- 
mates. That  generations  of  devout  people 
have  so  read  it  is  not  strange.  But  that  they 
should  insist  upon  continuing  to  read  it  so  is 
strange  indeed.  The  story  is  as  true  as  it  is 
wonderful.  It  may  well  be  that  there  have 
been  innumerable  Adams,  and  that  many  such 
are  alive  to-day.  So  long  as  there  are  races  in 
human  form,  undeveloped,  savage,  rude,  igno- 
rant, immoral,  naked  without  being  ashamed, 
so  long  their  path  upward  to  true  humanity 
can  only  be  through  the  leadership  of  one  here 
and  there  who  has  passed  his  fellows  and  caught, 
at  least,  a  passing  glimpse  of  the  tree  of  life. 
When  such  a  one  has  reached  this  stage  of  eth- 
ical knowledge  and  choice,  he  must,  with  more 
or  less  sadness,  leave  the  lower  innocence  of  his 
native  Eden.  He  can  no  longer  have  pleasant 
companionship  with  those  of  his  kin.  And  this 
is  true,  whether  his  Eden  be  by  the  land  of 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  57 

Havilah  or  in  the  South  Sea,  or  in  the  slum  of 
a  great  city.  We  must  acknowledge  and  face 
the  fact  that  for  the  requirements  of  soul  not 
all  members  of  Homo  Sapiens  are  men.  To  de- 
termine in  the  case  of  any  individual  whether 
or  not  he  has  attained  to  the  possession  of  a 
soul  capable  of  continuance  is  difficult  indeed. 
But  it  is  no  more  and  no  less  difficult  than  it  is 
to  decide  at  what  point  of  his  embryonic  growth 
he  became  human  from  the  naturalist's  stand- 
point. The  ovum  of  a  man  and  of  a  dog  are 
absolutely  indistinguishable.  The  human  em- 
bryo runs  through  and  recapitulates  in  a  mar- 
vellous way  the  line  of  ascent  from  the  low 
order  of  life  through  which  the  race  has  climbed. 
It  has  been  generally  taken  for  granted  that  he 
becomes  possessed  of  a  "soul"  at  some  point 
between  the  instant  of  the  fertilization  of  the 
ovum  and  his  issue  from  the  womb.  But  for 
this  there  is  not,  nor  ever  has  been,  a  scintilla 
of  evidence.  The  marvellous  insight,  which 
the  modern  microscope  has  now  made  possible, 
into  cell  and  germ  life  has  made  it  evident  that 
the  very  germs  themselves  have  an  antecedent 
history  as  strange  and  as  complex  as  that  of 
the  embryo.  They  also  move,  choose,  select, 
repel,  show  preferences  and  aversions,  in  a  word 
they  appear  to  have  personalities  of  their  own 


5S  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

as  really  as  does  the  new-born  babe.  A  new- 
individual  does,  indeed,  come  into  existence  at 
the  moment  of  conception.  But  it  is  not  an  in- 
dependent entity  in  respect  either  of  its  psychic 
or  its  physical  features,  but  is  the  product  of 
the  blending  of  the  two  parental  cells.  Each 
of  these  cells  has  a  previous  personality  and  a 
previous  history.  The  biogenesis  of  the  soul 
cannot  any  longer  be  concluded  between  con- 
ception and  birth.  The  man  with  the  micro- 
scope in  the  laboratory  and  the  experimental 
psychologist  have  together  traced  its  path  both 
backward  and  upward,  far  enough  to  make  it 
evident  that  the  narrow  limit  within  which  the 
soul's  origin  and  history  has  heretofore  been 
confined  can  no  longer  contain  it.  It  is  already 
clear  that  the  psychic  life  which  we  call  soul  in 
man,  instinct  in  the  beast,  and  affinity  in  the 
germ  cell  is  the  same  thing;  that  it  develops 
according  to  laws  of  its  own;  that  it  is  from 
first  to  last  correlated  with  an  organized  mate- 
rial structure ;  that  at  certain  stages  in  its  -up- 
ward movement  it  takes  on  new  and  strange 
forms  and  qualities  which  could  not  at  all  be 
predicted  from  any  study  of  it  at  a  previous 
stage.  But  the  thing  of  supreme  importance 
for  our  purpose  is  that  the  upward  steps  or 
stages    of    physical   evolution   do   not   at   all 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  59 

coincide  with  the  steps  or  stages  of  psychic 
evolution.  Keason,  of  a  high  order,  for  exam- 
ple, is  found  among  the  coelentera,  seems  to  lie 
dormant  throughout  the  reptiles,  and  shows  it- 
self at  unexpected  and  incalculable  places  among 
mammalia.  Does  reason  in  man  take  on  any- 
new  quality  in  virtue  of  which  every  individual 
becomes  immortal  ?  The  secret  which  we  long 
to  discover  is  this :  Does  the  psychic  life  of  an 
individual  at  any  stage  of  evolution  ever  attain 
to  such  a  high,  stable,  and  independent  exist- 
ence of  its  own  that  it  will  be  able  to  subsist  in 
spite  of  the  disintegration  of  the  physical  or- 
ganism with  which  it  is  immediately  corre- 
lated? What  are  the  conditions  upon  which 
a  survival  must  depend  ?  Are  these  conditions 
satisfied  in  the  psychic  lives  to  be  found  among 
the  lower  animals  ?  Are  the  conditions  present 
in  the  case  of  every  individual  of  that  race 
which  we  call  man?  Or  is  the  possibility  of 
individual  immortality  only  reached  at  a  point 
more  or  less  advanced  in  the  progress  of  man 
himself  ?  In  fine,  is  man  immortal  ?  —  or  is  he 
only  immortahlef 


"  Learn  the  mystery  of  progression  duly, 
Call  not  each  successive  change  decay; 
But  know  we  only  hold  our  treasures  truly 
When  it  seems  as  if  they  passed  away ; 

"Nor  dare  to  blame  God^s  gifts  for  incompleteness ; 
In  that  want  their  safety  lies ;  they  roll 
Toward  some  infinite  depth  of  love  and  sweetness, 
Bearing  onward  the  reluctant  soul." 

—  A.  A.  Proctek. 


60 


CHAPTER  YI 

Just  what  is  it  which  overweighs  today  the 
hope  of  future  life  ?  "When  reduced  to  its  sim- 
plest terms,  is  it  not  that  we  have  found  mind 
to  be  much  more  closely  bound  up  with  matter 
than  had  been  supposed  ?  Underlying  the  popu- 
lar belief  in  a  resurrection  and  future  life,  there 
have  been  heretofore  a  set  of  notions,  partly 
scientific  and  partly  theological,  which  are 
surely  becoming  untenable  under  the  influence 
of  increasing  knowledge.  The  uneducated  and 
unthinking  man  still  believes,  no  doubt,  that  we 
are  all  the  descendants  of  a  first  man  whose 
body  God  fashioned  mechanically  out  of  the 
earth's  matter,  not  more  than  four  or  five  thou- 
sand years  ago,  that  this  body  was  lifeless  and 
inert  until  God  by  a  second  specific  act  placed 
within  it  an  immortal  soul.  His  soul  was  to 
his  body  very  much  what  live  steam  is  to  a 
motionless  engine.  It  was  created  apart  from 
the  body,  and  complete  in  itself.  It  possessed 
the  maximum  of  intellectual  vigor,  and  was 
morally  faultless.  The  man  thus  constituted 
61 


62  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

was  perfect,  and  would  have  been  undying  had 
he  not  by  a  wanton  choice  forfeited  his  immor- 
tality by  an  act  of  disobedience. 

This  conception  is  so  naive  and  simple,  so  easily 
presented  before  the  mind,  and  has  been  so  long 
operative,  that  it  is  very  diificult  indeed  to  dis- 
engage it.  Many  a  man  who  has  long  since 
dismissed  it  as  impossible  still  believes  it  when  he 
is  off  his  guard.  But  the  intelligent  world  gen- 
erally has  become  convinced  that  the  facts  were 
not  thus.  So  far  as  the  body  is  concerned,  at 
any  rate,  it  has  been  created  by  God  through  the 
agency  of  a  series  of  secondary  causes  well-nigh 
infinite.  It  is  the  last  term  in  a  course  of  evolu- 
tion which  reaches  backward  in  time  and  down- 
ward in  scale  to  the  lowest  cell  of  primordial 
life,  if  not  beyond.  And  the  same  appears  to 
be  true  of  the  mind,  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
begins  to  show  its  presence  in  creatures  far 
below  man  in  the  ascending  scale.  The  life  of 
the  body  and  the  life  of  the  spirit  seem  to  have 
made  their  long  journey  together.  And  the 
relation  of  spirit  and  body  is  so  intimate  that 
every  thought,  sensation,  emotion,  is  connected 
with  some  specific  molecular  movement  of  some 
portion  of  the  cerebral  or  nervous  substance. 
The  body  is  an  engine  which  is  fed  with  food 
as  fuel.     This  fuel  is  consumed  and  converted 


EVOLtJTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  63 

into  tissues.  The  phenomena  produced  are 
digestion,  locomotion,  sensation,  and  thought. 
Every  act  of  thought  or  will  involves  the  con- 
sumption of  just  so  much  matter.  The  length 
of  time  required  to  convey  a  physical  sensation 
from  an  extremity  to  the  brain  and  send  back 
an  answer  in  terms  of  consciousness  has  been 
actually  measured.  The  experimenter  in  the 
laboratory  has  weighed  approximately  the 
amount  of  tissue  consumption  required  in 
solving  a  sum  in  arithmetic,  a  game  of  chess, 
or  in  an  emotion  of  anger  or  love.  The  prac- 
tical result  of  all  such  experimentation  and 
observation  has  been  to  make  it  increasingly 
difficult  to  believe  that  the  soul  has  an  inde- 
pendent existence,  and  that  that  existence  can 
survive  after  the  cessation  of  bodily  functions. 
Those  who  feel  this  difficulty  the  most  keenly 
are  often  those  who  most  ardently  wish  for  im- 
mortality. But  this  wish  is  overladen  by  their 
knowledge.  Thus  far  it  has  not  affected  their 
lives.  They  love  righteousness  and  hate  in- 
iquity. They  are  possibly  all  the  more  strenu- 
ous in  their  obedience  to  duty  because  they 
fear  that  they  might  be  less  so  without  any 
ulterior  peril.  They  do  not  wish  to  either  live 
or  die  like  the  beasts,  but  they  fear  they  must. 
They  lay  their  dead  away  out  of  sight  with  a 


64  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

regret  so  keen  and  so  final  that  they  do  not 
care  to  speak  about  it.  Their  loves  are  all  the 
more  engrossing  because  they  cannot  see  any 
possibility  of  the  dear  companionship  continu- 
ing after  the  present  conditions  shall  have  been 
broken.  They  have  no  quarrel  with  the  simple 
faith  of  him  who  looks  confidently  for  a  resur- 
rection of  the  decayed  bodily  form.  They 
rather  envy  him.  Indeed,  one  of  the  deadliest 
temptations  is  that  which  solicits  one  to  push 
all  his  knowledge  away  by  a  violent  act  of  will 
so  that  he  may  believe  the  thing  for  which  he 
so  greatly  longs.  The  most  potent  and  ele- 
mental of  instincts  is  here  opposed  by  the 
highest  and  best-established  knowledge.  The 
hope  of  immortality  is  but  the  instinct  of  self- 
protection  carried  to  its  highest  term.  The 
dread  of  ceasing  to  be  is  common  to  all  sentient 
beings  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest.  But, 
also,  experience  has  painfully  shown  that  the 
desire  to  live  is  impotent  to  maintain  one  in 
living. 

l^ot  a  few  noble  souls  have  sought  relief  from 
this  distress  by  dwelling  upon  one  of  those 
broad  facts  which  the  modern  study  of  life 
has  brought  out  so  vividly.  It  is  easy  to  see 
that  no  individual  atom  of  life  is  altogether 
wasted  in  the  mighty  onflow.      "When  its  in- 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  65 

dividual  life  ceases,  it  at  least  enriches  the  soil. 
It  contributes  its  mite  toward  better  things  and 
better  beings  to  come  after.  Nature,  the  mighty 
master  builder,  wastes  nothing.  Each  lower 
order  of  life  is  the  scaffold  upon  which  a  higher 
is  reared.  Each  overthrown  individual  can  at 
least  become  a  grain  in  the  mortar  which 
cements  the  whole  together.  Myriads  must 
perish  in  order  that  one  may  live  and  advance. 
Should  not  this  thought  suffice  for  any  life, 
some  ask?  The  aspiration  need  seek  no  finer 
expression  than  that  in  which  George  Eliot 
clothed  it :  — 

"  O  may  I  join  the  choir  invisible 
Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again 
In  minds  made  better  by  their  presence, 
To  make  undying  music  in  the  world, 
Breathing  as  beauteous  order  that  control 
With  growing  sway  the  life  of  man. 
This  is  life  to  come, 

Which  martyred  men  have  made  more  glorious 
For  us  who  strove  to  follow :  may  I  reach 
That  purest  Heaven  :  be  to  other  souls 
The  cup  of  strength  in  some  great  agony. 
So  shall  I  join  the  choir  invisible 
Whose  music  is  the  gladness  of  the  world." 

None  could  wish  to  question  or  cheapen  this 
high  thought.  But  it  is  more  than  doubtful 
whether  it  can  be  anything  but  the  thought 
of  a  great  soul  trying  to  make  the  best  of  a 


6Q  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

broken  hope.  The  atmosphere  of  melancholy 
which  envelopes  its  very  phrases  is  significant. 
The  simple  fact  is  that  there  is  nothing  in  our 
experience  which  gives  a  sufficient  expectation 
of  good  in  humanity  yet  to  be,  to  make  up  to 
one  for  the  defeat  of  his  own  personal  existence. 
"Could  we,"  as  Mr.  John  Fiske  says,  "but 
know  that  our  present  lives  are  working  together 
toward  some  good  end,  it  would  be  of  less 
consequence  whether  we  were  individually  to 
endure.  To  the  dog  under  the  knife  of  the 
experimenter,  the  world  is  a  world  of  pure 
evil ;  yet  could  the  poor  beast  but  understand 
the  alleviation  of  human  suffering  to  which 
he  is  contributing,  he  would  be  forced  to  own 
that  this  is  not  quite  true,  and  if  he  were  also 
a  heroic  or  Christian  dog  the  thought  would 
perhaps  take  away  from  death  its  sting."  Per- 
haps. But  to  gain  this  solace  the  poor  dog 
would  have  first  to  be  convinced  that  the  future 
man  to  be  benefited  would  be  intrinsically 
more  valuable  than  a  dog,  and  also  that  beyond 
the  supposed  man  there  is  some  good  goal  to 
be  reached  whose  achievement  would  make 
worth  while  all  that  went  before.  But  just 
this  is  what  is  not  evident. 

Are  God  and  Nature  then  at  strife, 

That  Nature  lends  such  evil  dreams  ? 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  67 

So  careful  of  the  type  she  seems, 
So  careless  of  the  single  life ; 

That,  I  considering  everywhere 

Her  secret  meaning  in  her  deeds, 
And  finding  that  of  fifty  seeds 

She  often  brings  but  one  to  bear, 

♦  *  ♦  *  » 

So  careful  of  the  type  ?  but  no 

From  scarped  cliff  and  quarried  stone 
She  cries,  A  thousand  types  are  gone, 

I  care  for  nothing,  all  shall  go. 

No:  no  succedaneuin  will  suffice.  I  wish 
to  live,  Ij  in  my  own  proper  person,  with 
memory,  self-consciousness,  will,  and  the  love 
which  is  a  part  of  myself.  No  projection  of 
myself  into  the  future  as  an  influence  will 
satisfy  the  craving.  But  how  can  this  be  if 
that  nexus  of  sensation,  thought,  and  will  which 
I  call  "  I "  is  dependent  upon  the  interaction 
of  molecules  in  organized  matter  ? 


"There  are  thinkers  who,  because  the  phe- 
nomena of  life  and  consciousness  are  associated  in 
their  minds  by  undeviating  experience  with  the 
action  of  material  organs,  think  it  an  absurdity 
per  se  to  imagine  it  possible  that  those  phenomena 
can  exist  under  any  other  conditions.  But  they 
should  remember  that  the  uniform  coexistence  of 
one  fact  with  another  does  not  make  the  one  fact  a 
part  of  the  other  or  the  same  with  it.  The  relation 
of  thought  to  the  brain  is  no  metaphysical  neces- 
sity, but  simply  a  constant  coexistence  within  the 
limits  of  observation."  —  John  Stuart  Mill. 


68 


CHAPTER  YII 

We  have  dwelt  long  upon  the  newly  felt 
realization  of  the  fact  of  the  reciprocal  relation 
of  mind  and  body.  It  is  time  now  to  turn  to 
the  other  fact,  viz.  that  mind  is  something  else 
than  the  product  of  organized  matter.  The 
living  human  body  is  a  material  machine, 
weighing  a  certain  number  of  pounds  and  occu- 
pying a  certain  cubic  space.  It  is  acted  upon 
by  all  forms  of  physical  energy  known.  Gravi- 
tation pulls  it,  heat  sets  it  vibrating,  electric 
energy  stimulates  it,  chemical  energy  produces 
its  reactions  within  and  about  it.  Suppose  you 
set  apart  the  food  which  is  to  sustain  a  man, 
and  the  air  which  he  is  to  breathe  during  a 
given  period.  Let  the  food  be  weighed  and 
analyzed.  It  weighs  so  many  pounds,  ounces, 
and  scruples.  It  contains  nitrogen,  carbon, 
phosphorus,  and  what  not.  The  food  is  intro- 
duced. Chemical  and  physical  action  set  to 
work  upon  it.  It  is  broken  up  into  suitable 
form  to  be  carried  to  every  remotest  tissue. 
The  lungs  take  in  oxygen,  and  the  red  blood 


70  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

corpuscles  carry  it  with  them  in  their  swift  race 
to  the  ultimate  cells  where  it  is  needed.  The 
nerves  and  brain,  bones  and  tissue,  are  built  up, 
nourished,  and  stimulated.  But  now,  if  we 
only  have  the  instruments  of  sufficient  delicacy, 
we  can  weigh  again  the  increment  of  the  body, 
and  the  excreta,  and  find  again  every  atom  of 
material  energy  which  entered  the  body,  and 
account  for  them  in  terms  of  matter.  Every 
unit  of  heat  which  has  entered  the  body  or  has 
been  produced  by  chemical  reaction  within  it  can 
be  accounted  for  in  terms  of  heat.  Every  unit 
of  chemical  energy  which  has  acted  has  also  re- 
acted, and  can  be  accounted  for  in  terms  of 
chemistry.  !N"othing  is  lost,  nothing  lessened, 
nothing  changed.  Every  unit  of  physical 
energy  expended  at  any  point  in  the  cycle  has, 
at  most,  only  been  changed  into  some  other 
form  of  physical  energy.  In  a  word,  through 
all  the  protean  changes  belonging  to  the  nutri- 
tion of  a  living  body  matter  remains  matter, 
and  can  be  accounted  for  in  terms  of  matter,  no 
scruple  of  it  being  lost  or  unaccounted  for. 
The  law  of  the  Conservation  of  Energy  has 
been  satisfied.  But  at  some  point  in  the  cycle 
of  atomic  flow  it  has  touched  that  other  cycle 
of  sensation,  thought,  self-consciousness.  The 
matter  has    not    been  changed  into    psychic 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  71 

energy,  for  it  is  all  accounted  for  in  terms  of 
matter.  The  most  that  can  be  said  is  that  the 
two  cycles  touch  at  points  which  have  been 
fairly  well  ascertained.  But  the  unhesitating 
verdict  of  physical  science  agrees  with  that  of 
our  own  unsophisticated  self-consciousness  that 
we  have  here  two  actual  and  inconvertible 
realities.  Says  Professor  Huxley,  "  I  know 
nothing  in  the  name  of  biology,  and  never  hope 
to  know  anything,  of  the  steps  by  which  the 
passage  from  molecular  movement  to  states  of 
consciousness  is  effected."  "  The  two  things," 
said  the  late  Professor  Clifford,  "are  on  two 
utterly  different  platforms;  the  physical  facts 
go  along  by  themselves,  and  the  psychical  facts 
go  along  by  themselves."  The  longing  for  a 
larger  life,  which  is  now  so  painfully  defeated 
by  the  deep  realization  of  the  close  implication 
of  psychical  with  physical  organization,  can  only 
be  reenforced  by  bringing  back  vividly  before 
consciousness  the  fact  that,  after  all  has  been 
said,  mind  is  essentially  something  else  than  the 
output  of  organized  matter.  It  does  not  yet 
appear  whether  or  not  it  is  immortal  in  the  case 
of  the  individual,  but  it  is  much  to  be  reassured 
that  whatever  may  be  its  future  my  soul  is  a 
reality  now.  We  can  listen  with  serenity  to 
Professor  Haeckel  when  he  affirms  that  "the 


72  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

whole  marvellous  panorama  of  life  that  spreads 
over  the  surface  of  our  globe  is,  in  the  last 
analysis,  transformed  sunlight.  The  progress 
of  technical  science  has  made  it  possible  for  us 
to  convert  the  different  physical  and  psychical 
forces  from  one  form  to  another ;  heat  may  be 
changed  into  molar  movement ;  this  in  turn  into 
light  or  sound,  and  then  electricity,  and  so  forth. 
Accurate  measurement  of  the  quantity  of  force 
vrhich  is  used  in  the  metamorphosis  has  shown 
that  it  is  constant  and  unchanged." 

That  is  precisely  the  point.  It  is  constant 
and  unchanged.  When  the  sun  is  old  and  the 
moon  is  cold  and  the  stars  have  fallen,  all  the 
sunlight  which  has  ever  played  upon  them 
could  be  weighed  by  one  whose  scales  were 
great  enough,  and  every  impulse  of  it  be  ac- 
counted for  in  terms  of  solar  energy.  But  in 
the  course  of  its  stupendous  cycle,  it  had  rela- 
tions with  something  which  utterly  refuses  to 
be  defined  in  terms  of  solar  heat  or  any  of  its 
derivatives.  That  something  else  is  sensation, 
mind,  personality.  Professor  Haeckel  stands 
alone  in  his  unwarranted  dogmatizing.  Physi- 
cal scientists  almost  unanimously  refuse  to  go 
with  him.  They  solace  us  with  the  assurance 
that  self-consciousness  has  not  misled  us  by 
false  pretences,  claiming  to  be  something  when 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  73 

she  was  not.  When  the  last  word  has  been 
spoken,  it  is  that  physical  evolution  and  psy- 
chical evolution  have  moved  with  linked  arms 
toward  a  common  goal,  but  that  neither  has 
ever  been  confused  with  the  other.  If  one  will 
hold  this  truth  before  him  steadfastly  and  for 
a  sufficient  time,  he  will  realize  its  strange 
power  to  reenforce  in  him  that  sense  of  spirit- 
ual reality  which  threatened  to  be  overlaid  and 
extinguished  by  the  weight  of  the  physical 
universe. 


"  speaking  for  myself,  I  can  see  no  insuperable 
difficulty  in  the  notion  that  at  some  period  in  the 
evolution  of  humanity  this  divine  spark  may  have 
acquired  sufficient  concentration  and  steadiness  to 
survive  the  wreck  of  material  forms  and  endure 
forever.  Such  a  crowning  wonder  seems  to  me  no 
more  than  the  fit  climax  to  a  creative  work  that  has 
been  ineffably  beautiful  and  marvellous  in  all  its 
myriad  changes."  —  John  Fiske. 


74 


CHAPTER  YIII 

The  problem  of  immortability,  that  is,  of 
potential  immortality,  has  been  hopelessly  ob- 
scured by  the  traditional  presumption  that  all 
those  living  creatures  who  are  classed  as  Man 
on  physical  grounds  are  also  Man  on  psychical 
grounds.  This  being  assumed,  the  question  of 
a  future  life  becomes  one  concerning  a  race 
and  not  concerning  individuals.  This  explains 
why  all  arguments  for  immortality  have  been 
so  unconvincing.  They  have  tried  to  prove  too 
much.  All  those  considerations  which  would 
establish  immortality  for  all  men,  in  virtue  of 
their  qualities  which  they  possess  as  men,  are 
equally  valid  for  many  of  the  lower  animals. 
I  wish  here  to  bring  forward  and  call  attention 
once  again  to  the  fact,  already  noted,  that  the 
classification  of  Man  as  a  separate  species  is 
made  solely  upon  zoological  grounds.  It  is 
based  upon  peculiarities  of  his  skeleton,  chiefly. 
It  is  a  classification  good  enough  for  the  zoolo- 
gist, but  it  is  utterly  confusing  to  the  psycholo- 
gist.  Those  broad  lines  of  demarkation  which 
76 


76  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

mark  off  species  from  species  in  the  ascent  of 
bodily  function,  do  not  at  all  coincide  with  the 
great  steps  by  which  mental  evolution  has 
climbed.  The  point  at  which  we  shall  probably 
have  to  look  for  the  emergence  of  imraortabil- 
ity  is  not  at  that  which  separates  man  from  the 
brute,  but  at  that  which  separates  between  one 
kind  of  man  and  all  the  rest.  The  story  is  told 
of  a  distinguished  Frenchman,  who,  to  the  long 
argument  of  a  friend  against  the  possibility  of 
a  future  life,  replied :  "  You  say  you  are  not  im- 
mortal ?  Very  probably  you  are  right.  Prob- 
ably you  are  not;  but  I  am."  This  is  much 
more  than  a  happy  repartee.  It  is  essentially 
the  solution  of  a  problem  otherwise  insoluble. 
Whatever  may  turn  out  to  be  the  difficulty  of 
drawing  such  a  line  among  men  does  not  concern 
us  at  this  stage  of  the  argument.  It  is  sufficient 
for  the  present  to  point  out  that  it  is  far  less  diffi- 
cult to  draw  the  line  this  way  than  in  any  other 
way.  It  is  hardly  at  all  realized  how  nearly  the 
lowest  man  and  the  highest  animal  approximate 
each  other  on  the  physical  side,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  more  important  fact  that  their  psychical 
qualities  overlap.  The  human  race  has  had  a 
long  history,  certainly  tens  of  thousands  and 
possibly  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years.  Dur- 
ing by  far  the  greater  portion  of  this  long  pe- 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  77 

riod  he  was  psychically  far  nearer  to  the  brute 
than  we  realize.  There  is  nothing  whatever  to 
indicate  that  he  possessed  a  moral  sense  differ- 
ing greatly  in  degree  or  differing  at  all  in  kind 
from  that  manifested  by  his  infra-humsui  an- 
cestors. He  did  not  know  good  and  evil,  and 
he  was  naked  without  sense  of  shame.  But 
the  more  important  fact  is  that  he  still  exists  at 
the  same  low  stage  of  development  in  very  con- 
siderable numbers.  It  is  essential  that  this  fact 
should  be  realized.  There  is  no  need  to  search 
for  the  "  missing  link."  The  connection  of  the 
orders  of  ascending  life  is  not  well  represented 
by  the  simile  of  a  chain  and  links.  It  is  rather 
a  line,  bearing  upward  with  an  immensely 
eccentric  curve.  If  that  curve  can  be  meas- 
ured in  any  considerable  segment  of  its  length, 
the  rest  of  it  can  be  calculated,  no  matter  how 
many  gaps  be  inaccessible.  To  calculate  the 
equation  of  a  curve  it  is  not  necessary  to  have 
it  in  sight  throughout  its  whole  extent.  Be- 
tween the  lowest  man  now  living  and  the  high- 
est, there  is  at  least  a  distance  quite  as  great  as 
that  imagined  between  the  lowest  man  and  the 
highest  form  which  preceded  him.  "We  but 
faintly  realize,  either,  how  low  in  the  scale  of 
being  the  lowest  man  is,  or  how  high  the  high- 
est is.     Types  of  humanity  so  low  that  their 


78  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

very  existence  was  unbelievable  have  lurked  in 
the  hidden  places  of  the  earth  for  ages  unsus- 
pected. The  stories  of  the  past  concerning 
them  were  dismissed  as  myths  and  legends  and 
childish  tales.  One  of  the  most  wonderful  ad- 
ditions to  the  sum  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
nineteenth  century  has  been  their  rediscovery. 
It  is  a  significant  coincidence  that,  just  as  Dar- 
win's book  on  the  "  Descent  of  Man"  was  is- 
sued, Du  Chaillu  returned  from  tropical  Africa 
with  his  story  of  the  Pygmies.  The  story 
seemed  so  incredible  and  monstrous  that  the 
old  Frenchman  has  lived  to  this  day  bearing 
the  stigma  of  unveracity,  though  his  account 
has  been  long  since  verified.  The  facts  con- 
cerning this  primitive  man  and  his  congeners 
have  been  well  and  carefully  brought  together 
by  Morris  in  "  Man  and  his  Ancestors,"  which 
I  follow.  Dr.  Schweinfurth  met  with  them  on 
the  Wells  Eiver,  in  four  degrees  north  latitude. 
The  tribe  found  by  him  was  composed  of  indi- 
viduals averaging  about  four  feet  in  height, 
none  being  over  four  feet  and  a  half,  —  about 
the  height  of  an  American  boy  of  eight  years 
of  age.  He  describes  them  as  "having  large 
heads,  huge  ears,  and  very  ape-like  faces.  Their 
arms  are  long  and  lank,  the  chest  flat  and 
narrow,   widening  below    to    support  a   huge 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  79 

abdomen,  the  legs  short  and  bandy,  the  walk  a 
waddling  motion,  suggesting  strangely  that  of 
a  gibbon.  They  are  also  ape-like  in  their  inces- 
sant grimacing,  twitching  of  the  eyebrows, 
nodding  and  wagging  of  the  head,  and  remark- 
able agility."  Stanley  describes  one  of  them 
which  he  saw,  as  having  "  small,  cunning,  mon- 
key-like eyes,  close  and  deeply  set,  protruding 
lips,  prominent  abdomen,  narrow,  flat  chest, 
sloping  shoulders,  long  arms,  feet  strongly 
turned  inward,  and  very  short  lower  legs.  He 
was  a  little  over  four  feet  high,  of  a  light  choco- 
late color,  with  a  thin  fringe  of  whiskers,  his 
legs  bowed  and  without  any  developed  calf. 
His  body  was  covered  with  a  thick,  fur-like 
hair,  nearly  half  an  inch  long."  They  wear  no 
clothes  whatever,  build  no  houses,  cannot  count 
above  two,  the  adults  manifest  no  trace  of 
affection  for  father,  mother,  brother,  or  sister. 
Their  language  is  undeveloped,  consisting  of 
clicks  and  inarticulate  vocals.  Two  of  them 
were  brought  to  Italy  in  1876,  where,  in  the 
course  of  several  years,  they  learned  to  speak 
and  read  Italian,  and  one  of  them  showed  some 
proficiency  in  music.  Their  intellectual  devel- 
opment stopped,  however,  at  about  the  point 
usually  reached  by  a  European  child  of  ten 
years  old,  and  could  not  be  carried  any  farther. 


80  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Their  life  period  is  about  forty  years,  in  no 
case  having  been  known  to  reach  fifty.  Their 
skull  capacity  is  about  in  the  ratio  of  27,  that 
of  the  average  American  being  about  40,  and 
that  of   the  gorilla  20. 

ITow,  the  zoologist,  basing  his  classifica- 
tion upon  peculiarities  of  skeleton  and  in- 
tegument, will  classify  them  under  Homo 
Sajpiens.  But  when  mental  and  spiritual 
standards  are  applied,  what  are  they?  Are 
they  "man"  or  not?  The  attempt  has  been 
made  to  account  for  them  as  local  instances 
of  degeneration  from  a  higher  type.  This 
attempt  breaks  down,  however,  in  face  of 
the  fact  that  they  manifestly  belong  to  a  nu- 
merous group,  extending  geographically  from 
the  southwest  point  of  Africa  to  far  Eastern 
Asia.  Tribes  evidently  akin  to  them  are  found 
in  Africa  from  the  Cape  to  the  Sahara,  in  Mada- 
gascar, in  Malacca  and  the  Andaman  Islands, 
in  Ceylon  and  the  Philippines,  in  India  and 
Borneo.  They  cannot  be  explained  by  any 
theory  of  degradation.  They  need  no  expla- 
nation if  the  simple  facts  be  faced.  There  is 
no  difficulty  in  the  case  except  that  which  is 
caused  by  the  predetermination  to  draw  a  hard 
and  fast  line  between  man  and  animal,  and  to 
range  every  individual  man  upon  one  side  of 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMOETALITY  81 

that  line,  and  every  animal  on  the  other.  If 
the  fact  be  admitted  that,  for  psychical  pur- 
poses, the  line  does  not  run  in  that  place,  the 
perplexity  vanishes.  But  if  it  be  insisted,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  either  all  men  are  by  their 
constitution  immortal,  or  that  none  are,  then  it 
will  in  the  long  run  prove  more  reasonable  to 
deny  it  of  all  men  than  to  believe  it  of  all. 
Beings  are  living  on  the  earth  to-day  at  every 
conceivable  stage  between  that  of  the  serai- 
human  Akka,  who  has  no  religion,  no  super- 
stitions, no  developed  moral  sense,  and  the 
enlightened  American  or  European  Christian 
whose  sense  of  moral  personality  and  self- 
consciousness  is  far  stronger  than  his  sense  of 
physical  being.  It  appears  to  be  most  reason- 
able that  at  some  point,  yet  to  be  defined,  but 
between  these  two  extremes,  the  "  power  of  an 
endless  life  "  is  reached. 


"I  can  believe;  this  dread  machinery 
Of  sin  and  sorrow  would  confound  me  else. 
Devised  all  pain,  at  most  expenditure 
Of  pain  by  who  devised  pain  —  to  evolve 
By  new  machinery  in  counterpart, 
The  moral  qualities  of  Man  —  how  else?  — 
To  make  him  live  in  turn,  and  be  beloved, 
Creature  and  self-sacrificing  too. 
And  thus  eventually  Godlike." 

—  "  The  Bing  and  the  Book  " 


CHAPTER  IX 

We  have  now  reached  the  point  where  the 
crucial  question  must  be  faced.  If  we  are 
driven  to  believe  that  iramortability  may  be 
predicated  of  some  member  of  the  race,  or  of 
one  kind  of  men  but  not  of  all,  then  we  must 
ask,  Where  is  the  line  to  be  drawn  ?  Or,  to  put 
it  in  another  way,  At  what  point  in  the  upward 
movement  does  the  individual  personality  take 
on  those  qualities  which  may  enable  it  to  sur- 
vive the  death  of  the  body  ?  Upon  what  does 
immortality  depend  ?  What  are  its  conditions  ? 
How  can  those  conditions  be  fulfilled?  Are 
they  at  all  under  the  control  of  the  individual 
will  ?  Or  is  the  individual  on  entering  into  the 
eternal  life  as  passive  and  helpless  as  he  is  in 
being  ushered  into  this  world  from  the  womb 
after  the  full  term  of  embryonic  development 
is  completed? 

Before  offering  any  reply  to  these  questions 
it  will  be  well  to  stop  long  enough  to  make  one 
88 


84  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

or  two  needful  distinctions.  In  the  first  place, 
there  have  been  not  a  few,  both  in  ancient  and 
modern  times,  who  have  maintained  the  truth 
of  a  "Conditional  Immortality."  But  they 
have  in  every  case  assumed  that  all  human 
beings  are  by  nature  on  the  same  level  of 
being,  possessed  intrinsically  of  the  same  qual- 
ity. If  some  become  immortal  and  others  do 
not,  it  is  only  because  immortality  is,  as  it  were, 
impressed  upon  some  from  the  outside.  It  is  a 
gift,  arbitrarily  bestowed.  It  is  because  one 
has  been  born  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  baptism, 
and  another  has  not;  or  because  one  has  par- 
taken of  the  imperishable  body  and  blood  of 
Christ  in  the  Holy  Eucharist,  and  another  has 
not;  or  it  is  because  one  has  by  a  deliberate 
act  of  will  "accepted  Christ"  and  on  the 
instant  been  "  born  again,"  or  such  like.  The 
"condition"  which  the  advocates  of  condi- 
tional immortality  have  laid  down  has  always 
been  an  extraneous,  arbitrary,  or  artificial  con- 
dition. What  we  maintain  is  something  differ- 
ing radically  from  all  these.  No  doubt  each 
and  all  of  the  conditions  above  named  will  be 
found  to  be  concerned,  but  the  distinction  it- 
self is  far  deeper,  more  natural  and  reasonable, 
even  though  it  be  far  more  difficult  to  state. 
Speaking  plainly,  it  is  a  biological  process  we 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMOKTALITY  85 

are  seeking  to  trace,  and  a  biological  classifica- 
tion we  attempt  to  discover.  It  may  be  that 
the  biological  classification  we  are  in  search  of 
may  turn  out  to  be  also  a  religious  one.  We 
believe  it  will.  But  it  will  be  religious  because 
it  corresponds  to  an  actual  reality  already  exist- 
ing, and  not  because  of  an  arbitrary  divine 
arrangement.  What  we  maintain  is  that,  if  any 
human  life  becomes  capable  of  passing  on  into 
another  life,  with  personality  intact,  it  will  be 
because  such  a  life  has  already  reached  to  a 
stage  of  spiritual  fixedness  and  stability  which 
will  make  survival  "natural,"  and  destruction 
"unnatural"  to  it,  and  that  such  an  achieve- 
ment, if  reached  at  all,  must  be  by  an  extension 
of  the  long  path  by  which  the  soul  has  climbed 
up  from  the  primordial  slime. 

Again,  it  is  of  the  first  importance  that  we 
should  realize  the  limitations  of  the  problem 
before  us.  I  have  used  throughout  the  term 
immortality  as  equivalent  to  survival  after 
death.  It  is  necessary  from  this  point  on,  how- 
ever, either  to  avoid  the  word  altogether  or  to 
reach  an  understanding  as  to  the  sense  in  which 
it  is  used.  Speaking  accurately,  immortality  is 
a  quality  which  can  never  be  predicated  of  a 
human  soul  at  any  stage  of  its  existence,  either 
here  or  hereafter.    "  God  alone  hath  immortal- 


86  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

ity"  is  not  only  a  scriptural,  but  a  scientific 
datum.  "  Eternity  "  is  a  category  of  the  uncon- 
ditioned. The  soul  is  an  organism.  The  con- 
dition of  every  organism  continuing  in  being  is 
that  it  shall  be  able  to  function,  and  that  it 
shall  correspond  to  its  environment.  This  con- 
dition cannot  possibly  cease  to  bind  in  the  next 
life,  or  in  any  subsequent  life,  any  more  than 
in  this.  In  this  sense  we  do  not  seek  for  im- 
mortality. Our  quest  is  an  humbler  yet  suffi- 
ciently momentous  one.  We  simply  try  to 
ascertain  from  the  data  available  whether  we 
can  find  a  means  of  transit  for  any  human 
personality  from  this  life  to  the  next  one. 
Whether,  if  that  prove  possible,  its  life  shall 
there  be  brief  or  long  is  a  question  not  now 
before  us.  When,  if  ever,  we  do  face  it,  we 
may  fairly  expect  to  possess  data  for  its  solu- 
tion which,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  are  not 
now  available.  With  this  caution  it  will  prob- 
ably be  more  convenient  to  keep  on  using  the 
term  immortality  meaning  thereby  an  exist- 
ence for  the  individual,  longer  or  shorter,  as 
the  case  may  be,  in  the  life  beyond  the  present 
one. 

The  world  teems  with  life.  The  sea  swarms 
with  fishes,  the  land  is  crowded  with  plants. 
Living  things  populate  the  surface,  creep,  and 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  87 

burrow  beneath  the  soil.  From  the  great  mas- 
todon and  his  huge  living  children  down  to  the 
minute  germ  cell,  which  the  powerful  micro- 
scope can  barely  discern,  life  is  here  in  countless 
forms.  Life  is  everywhere,  in  every  drop  of 
water,  in  every  grain  of  dust,  filling  the  still 
summer  air  with  its  multitudinous  drone,  roar- 
ing in  the  streets  of  men's  great  cities,  crowd- 
ing and  choking  in  the  forests  of  the  tropics. 
Try  as  we  may,  we  cannot  adequately  realize 
its  abundance,  its  multitude,  its  myriad  forms 
and  ways.  It  emerges  silent  and  unseen  from 
inorganic  matter,  and  crowds  every  step  of 
the  long,  strange,  tortuous  path  upward  to  its 
supreme  manifestation  in  human  self-conscious- 
ness. When  we  begin  to  study  and  examine 
its  forms,  one  by  one,  we  are  arrested  by  the 
significant  fact  that  the  ultimate  goal  of  each 
individual  is  to  pass  on  to  some  other  the  life 
which  it  possesses.  If  it  can  only  reproduce,  it 
is  ready  to  die.  Its  organs  of  reproduction  are 
the  ones  to  which  all  other  are  ministrant.  Its 
provision  of  locomotion  and  digestion  are  but 
means  to  this  end.  Countless  millions  in  the 
lower  orders  of  animal  life  only  exist  long 
enough  to  copulate,  and  give  up  their  lives  in 
the  act.  In  the  vegetable  world  this  is  the 
law  without   exception.      Through   stem  and 


88  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

twig,  through  leaf  and  flower,  it  comes  to 
seed.  When  it  has  done  so  much,  it  has 
served  its  purpose  and  falls  into  decay.  Then 
comes  into  play  the  inexhaustible  ingenuity  of 
devices  to  begin  again  the  cycle  from  the  seeds. 
They  are  not  left  to  chance,  or  rather  the  laws 
of  chance  are  compelled  to  serve  the  purposes 
of  life.  There  are  hooks  on  the  seeds  to  catch 
on  the  fleeces  of  moving  animals;  there  are 
wings  or  balloons  to  float  them  on  the  wind; 
there  is  toothsome  pulp  to  entice  the  bird  to 
swallow  the  indigestible  kernel  and  drop  it 
in  suitable  soil ;  there  are  a  thousand  devices, 
all  to  the  same  purpose,  which  is  to  guarantee 
the  transmission  of  life.  To  the  same  end  the 
instincts  and  appetites  are  subsidized.  The 
"  imperious  instinct  of  propagation  "  dominates 
all  desires,  is  stronger  than  pain  or  even  the 
fear  of  death.  In  all  except  the  higher  animal 
forms  it  is  not  even  left  to  choice.  Reproduce 
they  must,  even  if  it  does  cost  life.  In  the 
whole  organic  world  every  other  consideration 
is  subordinated  to  the  single  purpose  of  keep- 
ing the  stream  of  life  flowing.  Even  the  most 
complex  human  society  is  organized  about  this 
supreme  necessity.  This  determination  is  so 
inexorable  that,  lest  it  might  be  defeated,  a 
hundred  thousand  individuals^  are  brought  into 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  89 

life  only  to  perish,  in  order  to  make  sure  that 
from  among  them  all  one  may  reproduce.  Even 
in  man  the  provision  for  reproduction  deter- 
mines the  whole  plan  of  his  being.  His  natu- 
ral term  of  life  is  adjusted  to  the  length  of 
time  required  to  reach  puberty.  When  his 
power  to  reproduce  declines,  he  begins  to  die. 
His  intellectual  powers  are  correlated  with  this 
movement.  His  social  habits  are  ultimately 
fixed  with  reference  to  this  need.  "Be  fruit- 
ful and  multiply"  is  the  primordial  command 
stamped  upon  the  very  constitution  of  animate 
nature. 

But  once  this  truth  has  gained  our  assent, 
it  leads  us  to  confront  the  supreme  difficulty. 
Life  seems  to  be  everything,  and  the  indi- 
vidual nothing.  If  only  the  species  can  win 
its  way  forward  and  upward,  the  unit  seems  to 
be  of  no  value.  "We  appear  to  be  caught  in 
the  current  of  a  mighty  moving  stream  of  life 
which  will  assimilate  our  juices  and  sink  us  in 
the  slime  or  fling  us  dead  upon  the  shore  with- 
out ruth  even  as  without  anger.  The  life  is 
everything;  the  organism  in  which  the  life  is 
for  the  moment  conserved  seems  to  be  nothing. 
Now,  if  an  individual  immortality  is  to  become 
possible,  nothing  less  is  necessary  than  a  re- 
versal of  thisfelemental  law.     It  is  clear  that 


90  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

that  can  only  be  reached  if  an  individual  be 
found  who  is  intrinsically  stronger  than  his 
species.  Up  to  this  point  life  sweeps  around 
everlastingly  in  a  closed  circle,  from  seed 
through  plant  or  animal  to  seed  again,  and 
so  about  continually.  If  escape  from  it  be 
ever  possible  it  must  be  at  a  tangent,  and  by 
some  kind  of  individual  whose  life  orbit  sweeps 
far  enough  away  from  its  material  centre  to  be 
caught  in  some  mighty  attraction  from  beyond. 
And,  to  continue  the  figure,  the  difference  be- 
tween the  individual  who  passes  on  and  the 
one  who  remains  enchained  within  the  circle 
of  nature  need  only  be  infinitesimal,  provided 
it  occur  at  the  right  point.  An  illustration 
which  may  serve  to  make  the  matter  plainer 
can  be  drawn  from  physical  mathematics. 
Take  the  case  of  two  bodies  moving  through 
space.  One  of  them  has  for  its  path  the  ex- 
tremest  conic  section,  that  is,  a  curve  with  the 
greatest  possible  eccentricity.  The  path  of  the 
other  is  a  parabola.  The  difference  between 
the  two  curves  is  literally  infiinitesimal.  Yet 
moving  in  the  one  the  body  must  ultimately 
return  to  the  point  from  whence  it  started. 
By  the  other  it  must  move  out  into  infinite 
space.  May  we  not  similarly  expect  that  a 
change  correspondingly  slight  in  the  psychic 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  91 

movement  of  an  organism  may  produce  a  result 
equally  important? 

In  the  lowest  order  of  life  there  are  really 
no  individuals  at  all.  The  amoeba  is  simply  a 
speck  of  protoplasmic  jelly,  uniform  and  slightly 
sensitive.  It  has  no  limbs,  organs,  or  members. 
To  multiply,  it  only  breaks  in  two.  ^  Each  part 
is  as  much  or  as  little  offspring  as  it  is  parent 
or  as  it  is  self.  Each  half,  in  its  turn,  divides 
again,  and  so  the  propagation  goes  on.  It  can- 
not be  said  that  individuality  belongs  to  any 
of  its  units,  for  each  unit  is  divisible,  and  it 
is  the  essence  of  personality  to  be  indivisi- 
ble. The  thing  which  cannot  be  divided  is  the 
in-dividual.  In  the  next  higher  stage  of  be- 
ing a  sort  of  compound  or  communistic  individ- 
uality begins  to  show,  as  in  sponges,  among 
animals,  and  through  the  vegetable  world. 
Each  sponge  or  plant  or  tree  is  a  group  of  par- 
tially independent  units  deriving  their  suste- 
nance in  common.  !N"ot  until  a  comparatively 
high  stage  of  evolution  has  been  reached  does 
the  actual  individual  appear  "  whose  life  is  in 
himself."  Then  he  appears  only  to  live  his 
little  life,  beget  a  child  if  he  can,  and  perish. 
The  incalculable  multitude  of  living  forms 
merge  as  it  were  into  a  mighty  river  flowing 
through  the  aeons  and  dropping  over  the  preci- 


92  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMOKTALITY 

pice  to  death,  more  numerous  than  all  the 
drops  at  lN"iagara.  Kor  does  the  spectacle 
cause  moral  distress  or  revolt  until  the  indi- 
vidual atoms  come  to  be  of  such  consequence 
that  we  begin  to  rebel  against  the  aimlessness 
of  it  all.  No  beast  has  been  defrauded  of  any 
due  because  it  has  to  die.  Mere  existence  and 
sensation  have  been  for  it  a  positive  boon, 
whether  its  life  has  been  long  or  short.  This 
is  also  true  of  the  brutelike  man,  and,  what  is 
of  more  consequence,  this  is  his  own  judgment 
in  the  case.  He  clings  to  life  for  its  own  sake, 
and  the  lower  in  the  scale  he  is  the  more  tena- 
cious he  is.  Even  Laertes  can  face  the  end 
with  a  light  heart  because  he  has  had  his  life. 
Kot  till  humanity  reaches  the  stage  of  Hamlet 
does  he  begin  to  question  whether  to  be  or  not 
to  be.  "Is  life  worth  living?"  is  a  question 
which  cannot  be  asked  until  man  has  reached 
a  very  high  sense  of  the  value  of  the  individual. 
At  all  earlier  periods  the  reply  is  yes ;  or  more 
likely  the  inquiry  is  quite  unintelligible.  Con- 
sidering the  whole  human  race  from  its  prime- 
val brutality  until  now,  it  is  probable  that  the 
overwhelming  majority  have  no  unliquidated 
claim  upon  existence.  They  have  had  the  gift 
of  living,  and  have  made  of  it  all  that  could 
be  made.    There  is  nothing  more  due.    But 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  93 

there  are  many  surely  of  which  something 
more  can  be  said.  Their  capacities  are  wider 
than  their  spheres.  Their  psychical  life  is 
stronger  than  their  physical.  Their  affections 
are  stronger  than  their  appetites.  Their  spirits 
hare  established  so  many  relations  with  other 
personalities,  with  nature  as  a  whole,  with 
ideals  which  are  more  real  to  their  apprehen- 
sion than  is  matter  itself,  with  the  Infinite 
Personality  whom  they  feel  enfolding  them- 
selves and  nature  in  his  arms,  that  to  think  of 
all  this  coming  to  naught  because  the  founda- 
tion of  the  material  body  is  cut  from  under 
it  by  death,  brings  to  our  feelings  a  sense  of 
distress  and  essential  unreasonableness  which 
is  intolerable.  Such  an  one  has  already  learned 
the  secret  of  going  beyond  himself  by  his  sym- 
pathies. He  is  an  individual,  as  the  inorganic 
crystal  is,  as  the  organized  germ-cell  is,  as  the 
brute  is,  as  the  animal  man  is,  but  he  is  some- 
thing more.  In  common  with  all  these  he  is 
under  the  law  which  subordinates  the  indi- 
vidual to  the  species  and  throws  it  away  when 
it  has  fulfilled  its  use  of  reproduction.  But  he 
has,  to  some  degree  at  any  rate,  and  in  some 
portion  of  his  being,  escaped  from  this  law  by 
having  come  into  the  possession  of  certain 
qualities  which  cannot  be  propagated  by  re- 


94  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

production.  He  did  not  reach  these  qualities 
at  the  point  where  he  became  man  by  bodily 
structure,  or  by  the  possession  of  mind,  but  at 
an  uncertain  point  high  above  that  of  primitive 
man.  But  whenever  and  however  this  new 
faculty  is  reached,  we  may  fairly  expect  that 
it  will  in  some  way  be  preserved  in  being. 
This  certitude  does  not  come  alone,  or  in  the 
first  place  from  religious  faith,  but  from  watch- 
ing IN'ature's  ways.  One  thing  the  scientist 
knows  right  well;  that  is,  that  JS'ature  does 
not  hesitate  a  moment  to  change  or  to  reverse 
methods  which  she  has  used  throughout  long 
stretches  of  time  whenever  she  has  something 
to  gain  by  such  reversal.  If  it  shall  appear  at 
any  stage  in  the  upward  movement  of  being 
that  more  is  gained  by  keeping  the  individual 
in  a  continued  life  than  by  breaking  him  up 
for  sake  of  the  species,  we  may  by  all  anal- 
ogy expect  that  Nature  will  find  some  way  to 
do  so.  It  would  only  be  to  repeat  what  has 
been  done  more  than  once  before.  The  inex- 
orable forces  of  gravitation  and  chemical  affin- 
ity had  their  own  way  in  the  universe  for  an 
eternity,  until  they  were  arrested  and  turned 
about  in  the  interest  of  life.  Overproduction, 
death,  and  survival  of  the  fittest  had  their  ruth- 
less sway  until  they  were  reversed  in  the  inter- 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  95 

est  of  affection.  The  supremacy  of  the  race 
at  the  expense  of  the  individual  we  may  expect 
to  continue  just  until  something  in  the  indi- 
vidual comes  to  be  of  more  importance  than 
that  law,  and  no  longer. 


"  Have  you  done 
Descending?   Here's  ourself,  — man,  known  to-day, 
Duly  evolved  at  last;  so  far,  you  say. 
The  sum  and  seal  of  beings  progress.     Good! 
Thus  much  at  least  is  clearly  understood  — 
Of  power  does  Man  possess  no  particle ! 
Of  knowledge  —  just  so  much  as  shows  that  still 
It  ends  in  ignorance  on  every  side : 
But  righteousness  —  ah,  men  are  deified 
Thereby,  for  compensation." 

—  Browning. 


96 


CHAPTER  X 

The  idea  of  eternal  life  has  always  been  asso- 
ciated with  that  of  moral  goodness.  Evil  and 
death  are  the  antitheses.  Righteousness  and 
long  life :  sin  and  disintegration,  —  this  is  what 
men  have  always  believed  to  be  in  some  way 
a  fundamental  truth.  But  it  is  greatly  to  be 
doubted  whether  they  have  realized  how  true 
it  is. 

In  a  very  real  sense  a  race  or  a  people  or  a 
nation  is  an  individual  with  a  personality  of  its 
own.  The  long  history  of  the  past  is  strewn 
with  the  dust  of  extinct  peoples.  In  a  com- 
paratively few  instances  their  rise,  climax, 
decline,  and  decay  lie  within  the  historic 
period.  No  doubt  these  rose  from  among  the 
ruins  of  innumerable  earlier  peoples.  "Why 
have  some  survived  while  others  perished? 
"Why  do  one  or  two  peoples  or  families  of  peo- 
ples to-day  feel  and  show  the  sense  of  secure 
being,  while  others  are  slowly  decaying  under 
our  eyes?  Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd,  in  his  book 
upon  Social  Evolution,  has  shown  with  singular 
u  97 


98  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

clearness  that  a  people's  length  of  life  depends 
upon  its  goodness.  Not,  finally,  upon  its  phys- 
ical vigor,  or  its  mental  advance,  but  moral 
goodness.  He  quotes  and  indorses  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's opinion  that  the  physical  and  intel- 
lectual equipment  of  the  average  Greek  of  the 
time  of  Pericles  was  very  considerably  higher 
than  that  of  the  average  Englishman  or 
American  of  to-day.  It  is  very  possible  that 
the  Babylonians  and  Egyptians  more  than 
equalled  us  in  these  regards.  The  phallic  sym- 
bols strewing  the  ruins  by  the  Euphrates,  and 
the  abominations  sketched  at  Pompeii,  give  the 
clew  to  their  decay.  "What  prevented  the 
American  Indian,  in  possession  since  the  dawn 
of  time  of  the  most  abundant  region  of  the 
earth,  and  with  his  great  mental  force,  from 
developing  a  civilization  which  would  have 
been  abiding?  What  accounts  for  the  deca- 
dence of  Spain,  and  for  the  unburied  corpse  of 
China  ?  What  explains  the  ruin  of  Eome,  and 
Constantinople,  and  the  states  of  Asia  Minor 
and  North  Africa?  The  answer  is  in  every 
case  the  same :  they  perished  because  they  fell 
short  of  goodness.  No  other  quality  could 
secure  for  them  continuance  in  existence.  The 
Teutons  have  endured,  and  promise  to  endure, 
in  virtue  of  certain  racial  moral  qualities  which 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  99 

they  developed  ages  ago,  and  which  have  saved 
them  from  being  brutalized  by  their  own 
strength,  and  from  sinking  down  in  their  stu- 
pidity. Goodness  can  thus  arrest  and  turn 
back  for  nations  the  primal  law  of  growth, 
vigor,  and  decline.  Is  it,  therefore,  too  much 
to  believe  that  it  may  do  the  same  for  an  indi- 
vidual man  ?  But  if  anything  like  this  be  true, 
it  is  clear  that  our  chance  of  future  life  turns 
upon  a  question  of  present  fact.  Does  one,  or 
does  he  not,  in  any  instance  possess  a  moral 
energy  sufficiently  strong  and  coherent  to 
dominate  his  life?  The  mere  possession  of  a 
potential  faculty  for  goodness,  or  the  actual 
manifestation  of  a  rudimentary  ethical  sense, 
will  not  suffice.  Brutes  have  that  much.  The 
races  which  have  perished  had  that.  Only  a 
moral  structure  developed  far  enough  to  take 
command  over  the  turbulent  appetites  and 
errant  thoughts  will  serve  the  end.  Now  it  is 
equally  clear  that  some  possess  this  quality,  and 
that  some  do  not.  It  is  a  quality  of  being  cor- 
related to  some  degree,  but  not  very  closely, 
with  intellectual  forwardness.  A  simple  hind 
may  be  very  good,  and  an  undevout  astronomer 
may  be  destitute  of  moral  sense.  We  have 
seen  above  that  there  are  now  living  whole 
tribes  of  undeveloped  savages,  who  have  no 


100  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

more  moral  energy  than  the  brutes,  —  for  it 
must  be  remembered  that  the  brutes  have  some. 
To  raise,  concerning  them,  the  question  of  im- 
mortality would  seem  to  be  essentially  irrele- 
vant or  premature.  They  have  not  yet  really 
entered  into  the  human  life  which  now  is,  to 
say  nothing  of  that  which  is  to  come.  As  in 
every  other  stage  of  biological  advance,  an 
individual  here  and  there,  no  doubt,  rises  far 
above  either  his  fathers  or  his  children,  and  no 
doubt  such  an  one  wins  for  himself  the  power 
of  indefinite  progress.  The  place  of  escape 
from  out  the  closed  ring  of  what  we  call  nature 
is  not  the  body,  nor  the  mind,  but  the  con- 
science. If  that  gate  be  not  found,  or  if  it  be 
too  narrow  for  egress,  there  cannot,  in  the 
nature  of  the  case,  be  any  thoroughfare.  Nor  is 
it  easy  to  expect  immortality  for  multitudes  far 
closer  to  us  than  are  the  Pygmies  or  the  Bush- 
men. As  one  wanders  observantly  and  thought- 
fully amongst  the  crowds  which  teem  in  the 
purlieus  of  a  great  Christian  city,  as  he  watches 
their  faces,  listens  to  their  meagre  speech,  pene- 
trates to  the  interiors  of  their  shallow  lives, 
realizes  their  brutality  and  mischievousness  and 
cunning  intelligence,  becomes  familiar  with 
their  desires  and  ideals  of  life,  above  all,  as  he 
sees  their  look  of  blank  insensibility  to  any  moral 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  101 

appeal,  he  is  hard  put  to  it  not  to  ask  himself, 
Are  these  really  men  ?  I  confess  frankly  that 
when  I  have  tried  to  speak  to  certain  kinds  of 
men  "  of  righteousness  and  judgment  to  come," 
I  have  felt  that  the  effort  was  little  less  vain 
than  would  have  been  the  same  exhortation  to 
my  good  dog.  One  can,  it  is  true,  make  his 
appeal  to  the  fear  of  death,  and  can  thus  evoke 
a  response  in  the  form  of  frantic  terror.  But 
one  can  do  the  same  by  pointing  his  gun  at  a 
predatory  crow.  The  fear  of  death  and  the 
belief  in  a  future  life  are  two  entirely  different 
things,  and  have  no  necessary  relation  to  each 
other.  So  far  as  one  can  see,  the  fear  of  death, 
as  an  emotion,  does  not  differ  either  in  kind 
or  degree  between  the  natural  man  and  the 
natural  beast.  The  natural  man's  Paradise 
may  be  edenic  or  it  may  be  barren  and  squalid, 
but  he  does  not  come  in  sight  of  the  tree  of  life 
until  he  leaves  it.  Myriads  still  dwell  within 
it,  being  even  now  as  the  "first  man"  was. 
"While  at  that  stage,  the  questions  concerning 
human  nature  are  those  which  are  asked  by 
chemistry,  physiology,  zoology,  and  compara- 
tive anatomy  and  psychology.  Eeligion  sim- 
ply cannot  speak  at  all  to  him  until  he  becomes 
as  a  god,  knowing  good  and  evil.  When 
this  stage  is  reached,  and  not  till  then,  does 


102  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

eternal  life  come  within  the  possibilities.  "This 
is  eternal  life  to  know  God,"  and  God  is  appre- 
hended only  through  the  moral  sense. 

We  may  admit,  without  hesitation,  that  it  is 
not  possible  to  define  the  point  at  which  the 
capacity  of  eternal  life  is  reached  in  the  devel- 
opment of  the  individual.  This  does  not  touch 
the  essential  truth.  ]N"o  physicist  can  draw  a 
line  and  say,  here  inorganic  matter  becomes 
organic ;  no  botanist  can  say,  here  vegetable 
life  becomes  animal ;  no  naturalist  can  say, 
here  the  invertebrate  ends  and  the  vertebrate 
begins ;  no  psychologist  can  say,  here  instinct 
ceases  and  reason  commences.  ISTo  anthropol- 
ogist can  draw  a  line  below  man,  or  through, 
men,  or  in  the  life  of  the  individual  man,  and 
say,  here,  now,  is  conscience.  But  facts  do  not 
cease  to  be  because  classification  is  impractica- 
ble. We  may  rest  this  phase  of  the  argument 
at  this  point,  having  in  its  defence  all  the  broad 
analogies  of  nature  and  the  unanimous  agree- 
ment of  all  the  ages.  It  ought  not  to  be  a  sur- 
prise, and  it  ought  to  be  a  relief,  if  we  find  it  to 
be  also  the  teaching  of  Holy  Scripture. 


"When  once  this  question  of  the  after-life  has 
been  opened,  it  will  be  discovered  that  we  and  our 
predecessors  have  been  so  walking  up  and  down 
and  running  hither  and  thither  among  dim  notices 
and  indications  of  the  future  destiny  of  men  as  to 
have  failed  to  see  what  lies  upon  the  pages  of  the 
Bible,  open  and  free  to  our  use.  Those  who  read 
the  Scriptures  unshackled  by  systems  must  feel  an 
impatience  in  waiting  —  not  for  the  arrival  of  a 
new  revelation  from  heaven  —  but  of  an  unfettered 
interpretation  of  that  which  has  so  long  been  in 
our  hands."  —  Isaac  Taylor. 


104 


CHAPTER  XI 

For  very  many  it  would  be  an  inestimable 
relief  to  have  some  definite  deliverance  of  Jesus 
Christ  upon  the  question  before  us.  Are  all  men 
immortal,  or  are  only  some?  Is  a  universal 
resurrection  a  thing  which  he  takes  for  granted, 
or  is  it  not?  An  explicit  dictum  of  his  upon  the 
subject  would  be  for  many  of  us  an  end  of  con- 
troversy. But  here  it  comes  to  us  with  a  sort 
of  shock  to  be  reminded,  not  only  that  he  does 
not  say,  but  that  he  avows,  at  the  time  when 
he  spoke  upon  the  general  subject,  that  his 
information  was  limited.  "  Of  that  day  and 
hour  no  man  knoweth,  not  even  the  Son."  It 
is  not  impossible,  however,  for  us  to  find  out,  at 
least  in  a  general  way,  what  his  attitude  was. 
In  the  first  place,  we  have  a  sufficiently  full 
report  in  the  Gospels  of  what  he  actually  said. 
It  is  true  that  the  report  is  incomplete  and  frag- 
mentary, but  it  is  coherent.  Then  we  have  in 
the  other  portions  of  the  New  Testament  the 
interpretation  and  expansion  of  his  teaching 
by  very  intelligent  and  sympathetic  conterapo- 
105 


106  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

raries.  Finally  and  chiefly,  we  have  the  account 
of  his  own  extraordinary  career.  This  last  will 
constitute  a  chapter  by  itself ;  for  the  present 
we  shall  do  better  to  ask  the  limited  question, 
What  did  Jesus,  during  the  period  before  his 
own  "  resurrection,"  believe  and  teach  concern- 
ing the  future  life?  The  fact  that  his  lan- 
guage was  intelligible  to  those  who  heard  him  is 
proof  that  his  general  presumptions  were  the 
same  as  theirs.  But  it  is  a  simple  matter  of 
fact  that  he  spoke  to  people  who  were  not 
believers  in  the  "  immortality  of  the  soul."  If 
a  previous  belief  in  inherent  immortality  had 
been  needful  to  enable  them  to  understand  his 
further  teaching  in  the  matter,  then  he  would 
have  been  compelled  to  say  so,  and  thus  estab- 
lish his  premises.  The  point  is  that  he  took 
for  his  premises  the  beliefs  which  his  hearers 
actually  entertained.  It  is  at  once  most  neces- 
sary and  most  difficult  for  us  to  bring  ourselves 
to  realize  that  his  hearers  did  not  have  at  all 
the  beliefs  w^hich  are  taken  for  granted  now. 
Some  of  them  did  not  believe  in  any  future  life 
at  all.  Some  of  them  believed  in  a  corporate 
immortality  for  the  people  Israel,  with  which 
individual  continuance  had  nothing  to  do.  Some 
of  them  believed  in  the  resurrection  of  all  indi- 
viduals of  the  race  of  Abraham  alone.     Some 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  107 

looked  for  the  immortality  of  only  the  right- 
eous of  that  race.  But  nobody  believed  in  the 
immortality  of  every  individual  human  being 
as  such.  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  when  he 
faced  a  company  of  this  sort,  if  what  he  was 
about  to  teach  depended  for  its  validity  upon  a 
belief  in  that  which  is  now  common  among 
us,  the  presumption  of  universal  future  life,  he 
would  have  been  obliged  to  say  so.  But  he  did 
not  say  so.  The  beliefs  actually  existent  among 
his  hearers  appeared  to  serve  his  purpose  per- 
fectly well.  Moreover,  it  may  be  truly  said  that 
the  assumptions  now  current  would  not  have 
served  him  at  all.  One  of  the  most  difficult 
things  for  one  to  do  is  to  read  the  true  meaning 
into  a  word  or  phrase  to  which  he  has  long  been 
in  the  habit  of  attaching  a  false  or  mistaken 
or  secondary  meaning.  When  we  find  Jesus 
using  such  antitheses  as  "life  and  death,"  "eter- 
nal life  and  destruction,"  "  living  and  perish- 
ing," it  is  at  least  prima  facie  probable  that 
he  used  the  words  in  their  obvious  and  natural 
sense.  But  we  have  been  so  long  accustomed 
to  think  of  eternal  life  as  being  equivalent  to 
eternal  happiness,  and  the  converse,  that  it 
will  require  a  strenuous  and  steadfast  effort 
to  see  in  Christ's  words  what  they  meant,  and 
what  alone  they  could  have  meant,  to  those 


108  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

who  heard  them.  It  is  conceivable  that  the 
meaning  of  his  words  was  larger  than  they 
realized,  but  they  must  have  meant  that  much 
at  any  rate,  and  could  not  have  meant  some- 
thing incompatible  with  that.  Another  impor- 
tant thing  to  bear  in  mind  is  that  he  never 
deals  with  abstractions.  He  has  nothing  to 
say  about  "  man,"  but  only  about  men.  He 
never  refers  to  "  the  soul,"  or  "  the  human 
soul,"  but  always  to  the  soul  of  some  definite 
individual.  He  never  discusses  the  question 
of  immortality  in  the  abstract,  but  only  deals 
with  the  possibilities  and  destinies  of  individ- 
uals. He  never  assumes  that  man  is  mortal 
or  that  he  is  immortal,  he  simply  points  out  to 
the  individual  which  way  life  lies,  and  which 
way  destruction.  And  what  is  possibly  more 
important  for  our  purpose  than  anything  else, 
he  explicitly  declares  that  many  will  be  con- 
stitutionally incapable  of  comprehending  him 
at  all.  "  He  that  hath  ears  to  hear,  let  him 
hear."  In  other  words,  he  announces  that  he 
speaks  only  to  those  whose  spiritual  faculties 
are  sufficiently  developed  to  be  able  to  respond 
to  the  stimulus  of  his  truth. 

Bearing  these  preliminary  considerations  well 
in  mind,  we  may  now  ask,  "What  did  he  say? 
His  teaching  may  be  divided  in  two  portions 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  109 

which  differ  greatly  in  form,  if  not  in  contents. 
The  most  prominent,  but  least  clear,  is  that 
extended  address  in  apocalyptic  form  suggested 
by  his  disciples  inquiring  concerning  the  fate 
of  the  Capital  City,  and  recorded  at  length  in 
the  twenty-fourth  chapter  of  St.  Matthew,  and 
more  briefly  by  Sts.  Mark  and  Luke.  A  great 
difficulty  in  the  way  of  ascertaining  his  precise 
meaning  here  is  found  in  the  fact  that  the  form 
of  the  address  is  evidently  not  Christ's  own.  It 
is  framed  in  that  cryptic  manner  common  to 
the  later  apocalypses,  and  derived  from  the 
earlier  prophetic  style.^  Dr.  Gould  in  his 
"  Theology  of  the  New  Testament "  well  says 
of  it:  "Simple  as  are  these  teachings,  Jesus 
has  been  subject  to  the  most  singular  misunder- 
standings from  the  beginning.  The  last  things 
of  which  he  speaks  are  not  the  end  of  the 
world,  but  of  the  age.  .  .  .  Whatever  was  pre- 
dicted here  by  our  Lord  was  to  take  place 
within  the  generation  succeeding  his  death. 
There  is  a  consensus  of  scholars  about  this,  the 
only  question  being  whether  he  made  a  mistake 
or  not.  And  it  is  strongly  against  the  assump- 
tion that  he  did  make  a  mistake,  that  he  sets 
forth  in  the  parables  a  statement  of  the  slow 

iSee  la.  13:9,  10;  24:21-23;   Ezek.  32:7-10;  Joel  2: 
10,  30,  31, ;  Dan.  7  :  18. 


110  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

growth  of  the  Kingdom  which  clearly  contra- 
dicts the  idea  of  an  early  coming.  Thus,  in 
one  sense,  the  coming  of  the  Son  of  man 
occurred  at  the  destruction  of  the  Jewish  state, 
but  in  another  sense  it  is  continually  happen- 
ing, the  great  crises  in  the  history  of  the  world 
being  really  comings  of  the  Son  of  man."  In 
any  case,  and  whatever  it  may  purport,  this 
last  apocalypse  of  Jesus  is  so  dramatic  in  form 
and  imagery  that  not  much  can  be  learned 
from  it  as  to  the  essential  nature  and  possi- 
bilities of  the  individual  man.  This  must  be 
sought  from  his  more  definite  teaching. 

If  one  should  weave  together  the  words  of 
Christ  as  they  are  scattered  through  the  Gos- 
pels, he  would  find  that  he  had  before  him  a 
treatise  upon  life  and  death.  He  would  find 
the  conditions  set  forth  upon  which  continuance 
in  being  is  possible,  the  perils  to  which  being  is 
exposed,  the  means  to  counteract  those  perils, 
and  the  ultimate  issues  of  living.  But  he 
would  find  that,  throughout,  the  theme  is  the 
individual  life.  The  alternatives  dealt  with  are 
not  future  pleasure  and  future  pain,  but  living 
or  ceasing  to  live.  The  Gospels  are  biological 
altogether.  They  speak  a  language  which  is 
more  intelligible  to-day  than  it  has  ever  been 
before.     The  imagery  is  drawn  almost  exclu- 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  111 

sively  from  the  processes  and  phenomena  of 
life.  The  reason  is  evident:  the  illustrations 
are  determined  by  the  theme.  The  question 
is  not  of  rewards  and  punishments,  but  of  liv- 
ing or  perishing.  Whatever  of  pleasure  or  pain 
is  implicated  at  any  point  is  incidental.  With 
this  theme  to  expound,  and  speaking  only  to 
those  who  had  ears  to  hear,  Jesus  found  himself 
in  sympathy  with  his  auditors.  He  begins  by 
stating  the  situation  in  terms  which  the  zoolo- 
gist knows  to  be  true  of  life  at  every  stage. 
"Enter  ye  in  at  the  strait  gate:  for  wide  is 
the  gate  and  broad  is  the  way  which  leadeth 
to  destruction,  and  many  there  be  which  go  in 
there ;  because  strait  is  the  gate  and  narrow  is 
the  way  which  leadeth  unto  life,  and  few  there 
be  that  find  it."  Of  fifty  seeds  oft  nature 
brings  but  one  to  bear.  "For  God  so  loved 
the  world  that  he  gave  his  only  begotten  Son, 
that  whosoever  believeth  on  him  should  not 
perish  but  have  aeonian  life.  He  that  heareth 
my  word  and  believeth  on  him  that  sent  me 
hath  everlasting  life  and  shall  not  pass  to 
catastrophe,  but  hath  passed  out  of  death  into 
life.  That  which  is  born  of  the  flesh  is  flesh, 
and  that  which  is  born  of  the  spirit  is  spirit. 
Do  not  be  surprised,  therefore,  when  I  say  unto 
you  that  except  a  man  be  born  from  above  he 


112  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

cannot  enter  into  the  Kingdom  of  God."  The 
place  of  any  creature  in  the  scale  of  being  is 
determined  by  its  procedure.  "  For  every  plant 
is  classified  by  the  fruit  it  bears.  Men  do  not 
gather  figs  from  the  acanthus  nor  grapes  of 
brambles.  A  good  plant  cannot  produce  bad 
fruit  nor  an  evil  plant  good  fruit.  But  every 
plant  which  does  not  bring  forth  good  fruit  is 
cut  to  pieces  and  thrown  into  the  fire."  The 
ethical  life  follows  the  analogy  of  the  natural 
life  both  in  origin  and  method.  "For  as  the 
Father  quickeneth  the  dead  and  maketh  them 
living,  so  the  Son  quickeneth  whom  he  will. 
He  that  hearkeneth  to  my  word,  and  has  con- 
fidence in  him  that  sent  me,  hath  aBonian  life 
and  moves  not  to  destruction,  but  hath  passed 
out  of  the  dead  into  the  living.  I  declare  unto 
you  that  if  a  man  keep  my  saying  he  shall 
never  see  death.  Leave  the  dead  to  bury  their 
own  dead,  and  follow  after  me."  He  insists 
that  this  higher  and  more  enduring  life  ought 
to  be  achieved  at  any  cost.  "  For  what  will  it 
profit  a  man  if  he  should  gain  the  whole  world 
and  lose  his  psychical  life?  Or,  what  shall  a 
man  get  in  exchange  for  his  own  soul  ?  If  thy 
right  eye  or  thy  right  hand  should  be  in  the 
way,  pluck  it  out,  cut  it  off,  for  it  is  better 
\      that  one  of  thy  members  should  perish  than 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  113 

that  thy  whole  body  should  be  thrown  into 
the  Jakes." 

These  quotations  ought  to  sufl5ce  to  show  his 
teaching.  All  the  others  are  variations  upon 
the  same  theme.  His  revelation  was  a  revela- 
tion of  possible  life.  He  has  neither  threats  nor 
promises.  He  makes  his  appeal  to  the  instinct 
of  living.  If  you  do  thus,  and  thus,  following 
in  my  steps,  you  can  secure  for  yourself  a  life 
so  prepotent  that  what  you  call  death  cannot 
ruin  it.  Blessed  are  the  meek,  the  pure  in 
heart,  the  unselfish  in  spirit,  for  the  new  King- 
dom belongs  to  them.  If  you  devote  your 
energies  to  building  up  your  lower  life,  you 
will  lose  everything,  because  it  comes  to  an 
end,  but  if  you  disregard  it  in  the  interest  of 
my  eternal  gospel  of  goodness,  you  will  find  an 
aeonian  life.  What  is  all  this  but  the  annuncia- 
tion of  the  last  term  in  the  long  series  of 
organic  evolution?  And  is  it  not  supremely 
trustworthy  as  being  the  dictum  of  the  final 
personality  who  came  himself  only  "  in  the  ful- 
ness of  time  "  ? 

Now,  no  doubt,  the  question  will  arise.  If  this 
be  actually  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  how  comes  it 
that  it  has  been  so  long  and  persistently  mis- 
conceived? If  the  teaching  of  Christ  was  bio- 
logical, how  has  it  come  to  be  thought  of  as 


114  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMOKTALITY 

theological  ?  If  his  distinction  was  between  a 
perishable  and  an  abiding  life  under  conditions 
now  existing,  why  has  it  been  interpreted  to 
refer  to  the  difference  between  happiness  and 
agony  in  a  future  life  to  which  all  men  are 
destined  in  any  case  ?  It  may  be  replied  that, 
at  any  rate,  he  was  not  misunderstood  by  his 
apostles  and  first  interpreters. 


"  The  most  common  of  those  feelings  which  pre- 
sent obstacles  to  the  pursuit  or  propagation  of 
truth  are  Aversion  to  doubt  j  Desire  of  a  supposed 
safe  medium;  The  love  of  system;  The  dread  of 
the  character  of  inconsistency ;  The  dread  of  inno- 
vation ;  Undue  deference  to  human  authority ;  The 
fear  of  criticism ;  Eegard  to  seeming  consistency." 

—  Whately,  on  Bacon's  "Essays." 


116 


CHAPTER  XII 

The  earliest  extant  literature  of  Christianity 
was  written  somewhere  between  twenty  and 
forty  years'  after  the  death  of  Christ.  In  no 
case  can  the  date  of  any  of  these  documents  be 
more  than  approximately  fixed.  Nor  are  any 
of  them  reasoned  and  formulated  statements  of 
belief.  They  consist  chiefly  of  certain  letters 
which  have  remained  out  of  the  correspondence 
carried  on  by  some  of  his  friends  when  circum- 
stances had  carried  them  to  a  distance  from 
each  other.  This  correspondence  was  often  of  a 
personal  and  intimate  nature,  and  sometimes  in 
the  form  of  letters  written  by  some  prominent 
man  to  a  small  group  of  Christians,  with  the 
understanding  that  after  being  read  they  were  to 
be  passed  on  to  other  groups.  In  such  composi- 
tion we  cannot  expect  to  find  any  very  definite 
and  precise  statements  of  belief.  The  earliest 
literature  bears  much  the  same  relation  to 
Christianity  as  does  the  familiar  correspondence 
of  Huxley  and  Darwin  and  Gray  to  the  doc- 
trine of  Evolution.  To  attempt  to  reconstruct 
117 


118  EVOLUTION  OF   IMMORTALITY 

a  systematic  religion  or  scientific  creed  from 
such  material  is  not  easy.  But  here,  as  always, 
it  is  not  so  much  what  a  man  says  as  what  he 
takes  for  granted,  that  enables  one  to  see  his 
real  position.  The  earliest  books  of  the  New 
Testament  are  the  following,  and  were  written, 
approximately,  in  the  order  named.  The  Epis- 
tles of  James,  1  Peter,  1  John,  1  and  2  Thes- 
salonians,  Corinthians,  Galatians,  Romans, 
Ephesians,  Colossians,  the  Gospel  of  St.  Mark, 
and  portions  of  St.  Matthew.  It  may  fairly  be 
assumed  that  all  these  were  written  within  forty 
years  after  the  death  of  Christ.  Now,  the 
question  is,  do  they  or  do  they  not  take  for 
granted  the  indestructibility  of  the  soul  and  the 
natural  immortality  of  all  men  ?  Of  the  answer 
there  can  be  no  doubt;  they  do  not.  Moreover, 
such  an  assumption  makes  their  arguments  in 
many  cases  unintelligible,  and  in  not  a  few  makes 
them  worthless.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind, 
moreover,  that,  though  the  writers  had  become 
Christians,  they  had  not  yet  worked  free  from 
the  mass  of  confused  and  contradictory  notions 
about  the  future  life  among  which  they  had 
been  reared  as  Jews  and  pagans.  Of  course 
there  is  not  space  here  to  make  a  detailed  ex- 
amination and  collation  of  the  whole  New 
Testament.     That  would  demand  a  treatise  by 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  119 

itself,  and  would  be  well  worth  the  doing,  pro- 
vided one  could  be  found  to  do  it  who  possessed 
the  requisite  knowledge  and  was  able  at  the 
same  time  to  divest  himself  of  all  prejudgments, 
being  content  to  find  out  just  what  the  writers 
do  say,  and  not  concerning  himself  to  reconcile 
them  to  any  doctrine  or  to  each  other. 

In  general,  it  may  be  said,  without  hesitation, 
that  the  New  Testament  continues  the  same 
biolof^ical  theme  about  which  the  teachinof  of 
Jesus  revolved.  As  a  rule,  however,  their  argu- 
ments do  not  start,  as  his  do,  from  the  facts  of 
being,  but  from  the  fact  of  his  resurrection. 
The  significant  thing  is  that  their  assumptions 
are  the  same  as  his.  Says  St.  James,  "  Blessed 
is  the  man  who  survives  the  moral  test,  for  the 
issue  is  life.  The  lust  of  the  carnal  nature  be- 
gets sin,  and  sin,  when  it  is  full  grown,  endeth 
in  death.  For  God  has  made  of  us  "  (who  have 
endured  the  test)  "  a  kind  of  first  fruits  of  his 
living  things.  Whoso  lifteth  up  an  evil  one  into 
the  plane  of  living  saveth  a  soul  out  of  death." 
St.  Peter  exhorts  his  fellows  to  "  thank  God  for 
his  great  mercy  in  having  re-begotten  us  into 
a  living  hope  by  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ, 
into  an  inheritance  incapable  of  decay  or  fad- 
ing, stored  up  in  the  heavens  for  you  who  are 
preserved  by  the  power  of  God  for  a  salvation 


120  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

already  made  and  which  will  be  manifest  at  the 
last/'  "They  that  walk  after  the  flesh,  as  be- 
ing without  reason,  and  born  brute  beasts,  shall 
in  their  corruption  be  surely  destroyed."  St. 
John  indorses  this,  declaring  that  "  all  that  is 
in  the  kosmos,  the  lust  of  the  flesh  and  the  lust 
of  the  eyes,  is  the  empty  shadow  of  life,  is  kos- 
mic,  and  the  kosmos  is  perishable,  but  he  that 
doeth  the  will  of  God  abideth  forever.  He  that 
loveth  not  abideth  among  the  dead,  for  whoso- 
ever hateth  his  brother  is  a  murderer,  and  you 
know  that  a  murderer  hath  no  life  in  him." 
Neither  Sts.  Peter,  James,  or  John  intimate 
anywhere  in  their  letters  that  they  have  the 
remotest  expectation  of  continued  existence  for 
any  except  those  who  fulfil  the  condition  which 
is  the  burden  of  their  message.  They  expect 
future  life  solely  for  those  who  are,  in  their 
phrase,  "in  Christ,"  "have  passed  from  dead 
into  living,"  "  have  been  born  again,"  who  have 
been  made  "new  creatures."  They  assume 
throughout  that  this  kind  of  man  has,  through  his 
affections  and  his  conscience,  reached  to  a  stage 
of  psychical  being  which  differentiates  him  from 
the  "  natural "  man.  They  expect  immortality 
for  him,  not  because  he  is  a  "  man,"  but  because 
he  has  become  something  more.  "  They  are  of 
the  kosmos:  we  are  of  God."     "They  are  ani- 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  121 

mals,  not  having  the  spirit:  we  look,  in  the 
mercy  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  for  seonian 
life."  Whether  their  contention  be  valid  or  not, 
it  is  surely  plain  enough. 

The  earliest  letters  of  St.  Paul  are  those  two 
written  to  the  little  group  of  converts  which 
he  had  made  a  few  years  previously  in  Thessa- 
lonica.  By  the  time  when  he  began  to  write, 
the  belief  appears  to  have  gained  general  cur- 
rency among  the  Christians,  that  Christ's  plan 
was  to  reappear  while  his  friends  still  lived, 
gather  them  out  of  the  world,  and  then  make 
an  end  of  all  things,  to  rebuild  the  kosmos  and 
open  a  new  regime.  They  believed  the  fact 
of  his  own  resurrection,  but  they  had  not  come 
to  see  the  place  of  that  fact  in  the  economy 
of  life's  progress.  This  belief  colors  all  the 
earlier  New  Testament  writings.  It  was  a 
naive  error  which  only  death  and  the  passing 
of  the  years  could  cure.  They  believed  that 
they  had  come  into  possession  of  a  life  of  such 
quality  that  it  would  endure,  but  they  saw  at 
the  same  time  that  they  were  growing  old  physi- 
cally. Presently  the  great  missionary  learned 
that  his  Thessalonian  converts,  whose  expecta- 
tions were  the  same  as  his  own,  were  in  distress 
and  perplexity  because  some  of  their  number 
who,  with  them,  had  been  waiting  the  Lord's 


f 


122  EVOLUTION  or  IMMORTALITY 

coming,  had  fallen  asleep.  Had  they,  in  conse- 
quence, missed  the  immortality  which  they  ex- 
pected ?  St.  Paul  thereupon  writes  to  reassure 
them.  "What  he  says  and  what  he  does  not 
say  are  equally  noteworthy.  He  has  nothing 
to  say  to  them  about  a  universal  resurrection 
and  immortality.  He  writes :  "  I  would  not 
have  you  to  be  even  agnostic  concerning  them 
that  have  fallen  asleep,  or  that  you  should 
sorrow  as  do  other  people  w^ho  have  no  hope 
for  the  dead.  For  as  we  believe  that  Jesus 
died  and  rose  again,  so  also  we  believe  that 
God  will  bring  back  with  him  them  that  have 
fallen  asleep  in  him.  I  assure  you  in  God's 
truth,  that  we  who  will  be  alive  at  the  Lord's 
coming,  will  not  have  any  advantage  over  them 
that  are  fallen  asleep.  For  the  Lord  shall  de- 
scend from  heaven,  with  the  voice  of  the 
archangel  and  with  the  trump  of  God ;  and 
first  the  dead  in  Christ  shall  rise;  and  then 
we  that  are  alive,  together  with  them,  shall 
be  caught  up  in  the  clouds  to  meet  the  Lord 
in  the  air ;  and  so  shall  we  ever  be  w^ith  the 
Lord."  He  was  still  of  the  same  opinion  when 
he  wrote  the  Thessalonians  his  second  letter; 
but  as  the  years  went  on,  and  the  real  teaching 
of  his  Master  came  to  be  better  comprehended, 
he  came  to  think  of  the  new  life  less  and  less 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  123 

in  connection  with  some  great  kosmic  cataclysm, 
and  more  and  more  as  the  manifestation  of  a 
supreme  vital  force  which  would  continue  to 
operate  according  to  its  own  laws  to  the  end 
of  the  ages.  The  divine  classic  is  that  fifteenth 
chapter  of  1  Corinthians,  which  has  for  twenty 
centuries  been  read  by  Christian  charity  over 
the  dead  bodies  of  saints  and  sinners  alike.  It 
is  a  marvellous  construction  of  science,  poetry, 
faith,  and  reason  and  high  aspiration.  But  it 
concerns  itself  solely  with  the  "  dead  in  Christ," 
that  is  with  those  whose  spiritual  natures  are 
akin  to  his.  The  "  natural "  man  is  left  outside 
its  conclusions  by  express  terms.  If  any  one 
question  this,  let  him  read  it,  but  let  him  read 
it  all.  TVhen  he  has  read  that  "  as  in  ^  Adam ' 
all  die,  so  also  in  Christ  shall  all  be  made 
alive,"  let  him  read  on,  "  but  each  in  his  own 
order ;  Christ  the  first  fruits,  then  they  that 
are  Christ's  at  his  appearing;  and  that  is  the 
end."  The  drama  is  closed  and  the  stage 
finally  cleared  before  the  "natural"  man  has 
any  place  upon  it.  "That  which  is  natural 
comes  first,  then  that  which  is  spiritual.  The 
first  man  is  of  the  earth,  earthen :  the  second 
man  is  of  heaven.  As  is  the  earthen,  such 
are  they  also  that  are  earthen ;  and  as  is  the 
heavenly,  such  are   they  that    are    heavenly. 


124  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

As  we  have  borne  the  image  of  the  earthy,  let 
us  also  bear  the  image  of  the  heavenly.  For 
I  declare  this,  brethren,  that  flesh  and  blood 
cannot  inherit  the  Kingdom  of  God :  neither 
doth  the  corruptible  inherit  incorruption." 

I  am  painfully  aware  that  all  this  will  seem 
to  some  to  be  an  unwarranted  attempt  to  read 
into  St.  Paul's  words  a  meaning  which  they 
will  not  bear.  I  can  only  urge  in  reply,  that 
this  seems  to  me  to  be  the  natural  and  obvious 
meaning,  and  the  only  meaning  which  those 
to  whom  the  letter  was  addressed  could  have 
found  in  them.  And  this  conviction  is  estab- 
lished by  the  fact  that  this  meaning  squares 
with  the  fundamental  biological  purpose  of 
the  Gospel  of  Christ.  The  quintessence  of 
the  matter  is  that  life  in  its  supreme  phase 
conforms'to  the  law  of  life  at  all  its  stages.  It 
is  a  thing  to  be  achieved.  At  every  step  there 
are  a  thousand  candidates  who  fail  for  one  who 
attains.  Those  who  attain  remain  in  posses- 
sion while  they  fulfil  the  conditions  of  the 
order  where  they  are.  Except  a  molecule  of 
matter  be  born  from  above  it  cannot  enter  into 
life.  Except  the  living  animal  be  born  from 
above  it  cannot  become  man.  Except  a  man 
be  born  again  he  cannot  enter  into  the  kingdom 
of  heaven.     That  is  not  first  which  is  spiritual, 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  125 

but  that  which  is  natural,  and  afterward,  that 
which  is  spiritual. 

The  later  books  of  the  New  Testament,  such 
as  the  Kevelation  of  St.  John  and  the  apocalyp- 
tic portion  of  St.  Matthew's  Gospel,  throw  little 
or  no  light  upon  the  question  before  us.  "While 
it  is  true  that  they  concern  themselves  with 
the  "  last  things,"  it  is  equally  true  that  they 
write  in  a  manner  which  was  not  intended  to 
be  taken  for  the  face  of  it.  The  Apocalypse 
is  obscure  because  it  was  meant  to  be  obscure. 
The  writers  put  in  cryptogram  things  which  it 
was  not  safe  for  the  Christians  to  discuss  openly. 
No  doubt  it  was  generally  intelligible  to  those 
to  whom  it  was  addressed,  but  the  key  has  long 
been  lost.  It  is  probable  that  the  imagery  of 
the  Book  of  Revelation,  colored  by  the  gor-^ 
geous  but  fine  frenzied  imaginations  of  Dante 
and  Milton,  have  done  more  than  anything 
else  to  shape  and  fix  the  popular  ideas  concern- 
ing resurrection  and  the  other  life.  The  mis- 
fortune is  that  poetry  has  been  taken  to  be 
revelation  and  imagery  for  reality.  But  how- 
ever firmly  these  Oriental  pictures  may  be  fixed 
in  the  popular  mind,  their  reality  has  never  been 
accepted  as  part  of  the  Christian  faith.  The 
creed  is  content  with  declaring  that  we  "  be- 
lieve in  the  resurrection  of  the  dead,  and  the 


126     EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

life  of  the  world  to  come."  'No  public  creed 
earlier  than  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century 
contains  the  clause,  "the  resurrection  of  the 
body."  The  dramatic  framework  in  which 
this  process  is  set  in  apocalyptic  scripture  may 
be  helpful  or  may  be  confusing  just  in  propor- 
tion as  one  is  or  is  not  able  to  discriminate 
between  the  truth  and  the  imagery.  No 
end  of  error  has  been  caused  by  confusing 
the  one  with  the  other.  From  this  has  come 
that  series  of  mental  pictures  of  universal 
death;  an  underworld  wherein  all  souls  as 
phantoms  Avait  through  the  ages;  an  univer- 
sal resurrection;  a  spectacular  judgment;  a 
procession  of  redeemed  to  Elysium  and  of 
condemned  to  Tartarus.  Unless  one's  thought 
can  escape  out  of  this  Dore  gallery  altogether, 
it  will  seek  in  vain  for  a  reasonable  as  well  as 
a  religious  and  holy  hope  of  life  beyond. 


"  One  Almighty  is,  from  where 
All  things  proceed,  and  up  to  Him  return, 
If  not  depraved  from  good;  created  all 
Such  to  perfection ;  one  first  matter  all 
Endued  with  various  forms,  various  degrees 
Of  substance,  and  in  things  that  live,  of  life, 
But  more  refined,  more  spirituous  and  pure. 
As  nearer  to  Him  placed,  or  nearer  tending, 
Each  in  their  several  active  spheres  assigned, 
Till  body  up  to  spirit  work,  in  bounds 
Proportioned  to  each  kind." 

—  Milton. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

We  have  maintained  that  an  enduring  life  for 
the  individual,  if  attained  at  all,  must  be  reached 
through  his  highest  quality.  The  latest  to  be 
developed  and  the  one  which  dominates  all  be- 
low it  when  it  does  appear  is  the  ethical  faculty. 
It  is  the  universal  agreement  that  where  there 
is  no  conscience  there  is  no  soul.  Its  evolution 
has  been  slow.  Between  the  point  where  moral 
sensibility  shows  its  rudimentary  form  in  the 
beast  to  the  point  where  it  is  regnant  in  the  high- 
est type  of  man,  aeons  lie.  Until  it  is  developed 
there  is  no  avenue  leading  out  from  the  closed 
ring  of  nature.  The  gateway  to  the  celestial  land 
is  conscience.  Whenever,  and  not  until,  an  indi- 
vidual reaches  the  point  to  "know  good  and 
evil,"  he  becomes  potentially  immortal.  But 
this  faculty  is  a  very  different  thing  from  the 
intellectual  capacity  to  discern  that  certain 
actions  are  allowed  and  certain  others  for- 
bidden by  extraneous  regulations.  This  latter 
the  savage  has,  and  so  has  my  dog.  The  ethi- 
cal faculty  does  not  function  until  it  is  able  to 

K.  120 


130  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

respond  to  ethical  stimulation.  It  must  discern 
the  moral  quality  of  action  quite  independent 
of  prescription.  It  must  be  able  not  only  to 
say,  but  to  feel,  "  I  ought :  I  ought  not."  When 
this  stage  is  reached  the  possibility  begins  of 
some  kind  of  relation  with  "  the  Eternal  Power, 
not  ourselves,  which  makes  for  righteousness." 
At  this  point  the  individual  men,  knowing  good 
and  evil,  begin  to  be  as  gods,  and  to  take  on 
the  image  and  likeness  of  God.  If  any  abiding 
relation  with  God  be  possible,  it  must  clearly  be 
through  some  expansion  or  metamorphosis  of 
this  final  element  in  human  nature.  This  was  the 
"  Way  "  of  Jesus.  He  committed  himself  unre- 
servedly to  the  good.  This  was  his  meat  and 
his  drink,  to  do  the  will  of  his  Father.  He  does 
not  hesitate  to  say  that  if  he  is  not  found  doing 
the  work  of  God  he  is  not  worthy  of  credence. 
Through  this  nexus  he  identifies  himself  com- 
pletely w^ith  God.  His  very  consciousness  be- 
comes merged  with  the  divine  consciousness. 
He  loses  his  sense  of  human  individuality.  "I 
am  in  my  Father  and  my  Father  in  me," — then 
he  knows  his  immortality.  He  is  able  to  lay 
down  his  life  and  to  take  it  up.  Destroy  this 
temple  of  my  body  if  you  will,  I  am  able  to 
build  it  up  again.  In  a  word,  he  effects  his  escape 
from  the   mortality  which    belongs    to   men, 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMIVIORTALITY  131 

through  the  gate  of  goodness.  Then  he  turns 
to  his  hearers  and  bids  them  do  the  same.  He 
makes  no  attempt  to  disguise  or  minimize  the 
cost  to  those  who  determine  to  follow  after 
him.  Indeed,  he  assures  them  plainly  that 
except  a  man  deny  himself  and  take  up  his  own 
cross  and  follow  after  him  he  cannot  be  his  dis- 
ciple. But  he  affirms  that  that  way,  and  that 
way  only,  life  lies.  The  other  way  ends,  not  in 
penalty,  but  in  disintegration.  In  this  he  con- 
curs in  and  gives  divine  sanction  to  the  belief 
of  Genesis,  of  St.  Paul,  and  of  all  the  ages.  Imr. 
mortality  is  correlated  with  goodness.  St.  Paul 
after  a  long  and  painful  life  of  self-sacrijBcing 
devotion  is  content  to  say  for  himself,  that  he 
neither  knows  nor  cares  for  anything  else  but 
that  he  may  understand  Christ,  and  the  power 
of  his  resurrection,  and  to  imitate  his  sufferings, 
if  need  be  even  to  death,  in  order  that  he  might 
by  any  means  attain  to  the  resurrection  from 
the  dead.  His  fundamental  conviction  is  that 
escape  from  the  closed  circle  of  natural  life  is 
only  possible  "  through  Christ." 

At  this  point  we  come  to  face  a  very  obsti- 
nate difficulty.  In  the  continent  of  human  life 
Christianity  occupies  but  an  insignificant  space. 
It  covers  but  two  score  out  of  the  thousands  of 
centuries  of  human  progression.     Those  who 


132  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

ever  did  or  could  have  heard  of  our  Master  are 
but  an  infinitesimal  fraction  of  the  sum  total  of 
that  mighty  host  of  human  beings  who  have 
appeared  upon  and  passed  off  this  world's  stage. 
A  means  of  attaining  immortality,  therefore, 
which  would  only  be  valid  after  a  certain  date 
A.U.C.,  and  within  a  certain  geographical  area, 
could  be  only  a  mockery.  It  would  be  like  a 
zoology  whose  laws  would  hold  only  within  a 
thiergarten  and  be  inapplicable  to  the  beasts  of 
the  field.  It  would  be  but  little  to  call  such  a 
doctrine  unscientific,  when  we  might  justly  char- 
acterize it  as  profoundly  immoral.  "We  are  in 
search  of  a  bridge  by  which  it  may  be  possible  for 
individuals  to  pass  from  this  present  life  to  an- 
other. Common  equity  requires  that  the  hither 
end  of  the  bridge  should  be  placed  within  reach 
of  the  first  man  who  could  walk  and  wished  to 
cross.  "We  cannot  worthily  imagine  that  the 
great  Architect  should  have  either  postponed  its 
construction  until  countless  generations  had  per- 
ished on  this  side  the  flood,  or  that  he  should 
have  placed  it  in  such  a  position  as  to  be  avail- 
able only  to  an  elect  few.  Let  the  conditions  of 
eternal  life  be  as  inexorable  as  they  may  prove 
to  be.  We  are  familiar  with  that  necessity  at 
every  step  of  the  organic  movement.  No  one 
will  gainsay  a  rigid  selection  of  the  individuals 


EVOLUTION  OF  BIMORTALITY  133 

who  live  out  of  the  multitude  who  perish.  We 
can  see  the  reasonableness  of  this,  and  to  some 
degree,  at  any  rate,  the  beneficence  of  it.  But 
the  one  thing  which  the  moral  sense  demands 
is  that  this  selection  shall  be  a  natural  and  not 
an  arbitrary  one.  Time  was  when  devout  men 
denounced  the  phrase  "  natural  selection  "  be- 
cause they  fancied  it  circumscribed  the  action 
of  God's  intelligence.  They  had  not  then  real- 
ized the  unspeakable  relief  it  brought  to  the 
belief  in  God's  righteousness.  Even  the  gift  of 
eternal  life  might  scarcely  be  accepted  at  God's 
hands  if  it  came  tainted  with  favoritism. 
"  "Whom  he  would  he  slew,  and  whom  he  would 
he  kept  alive,"  may  serve  as  the  conception  of 
God's  character  current  at  the  court  of  Belshaz- 
zar,  but  the  moral  sense  of  to-day  can  only  so 
conceive  of  Baal. 

But  are  we  not  bound  to  hold  that  "  there  is 
none  other  name  given  under  heaven  among 
men  whereby  they  may  be  saved  but  the  name 
of  the  anointed  Jesus"?  I  think  so;  but  I 
think  this  fact  has  wide  implications  which  are 
seldom  realized.  If  eternal  life  be  in  any  actual 
way  organically  correlated  with  the  Divine  Man 
whom  we  adore,  it  must  be  in  some  way  which 
is  superior  to  times  and  dates  and  missionaries. 
The  great  apostle  could  only  be  restrained  for 


134  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

a  passing  moment  within  the  meagre  syllogism 
that  men  could  not  call  on  him  on  whom  they 
had  not  believed,  and  that  they  could  not  be- 
lieve on  him  on  whom  they  had  not  heard,  and 
that  they  could  not  hear  without  a  preacher. 
"But,  I  say,"  he  bursts  out,  "have  they  not 
heard?  Yes,  verily,  the  sound  went  into  all 
the  earth  and  the  words  into  the  ends  of  the 
kosmos."  If  the  Christ  be  the  Son  of  man  to 
any  effectual  purpose,  it  can  only  be  because 
he  is  some  force  which  is  available  under  the 
same  conditions  to  all  men  at  all  times.  The 
Life  of  the  World  must  be  able  and  ready  to 
flow  at  any  time  or  place  where  a  psychical 
organism  is  ready  to  receive  it.  The  theologi- 
cal schemes  of  "atonement"  give  us  little  or 
no  help  toward  resolving  the  difficulty.  They 
are  hopelessly  artificial  and  unreal.  They  all 
attempt  to  state  the  function  of  the  Christ  in 
terms  of  Hebrew  Sacrifice  and  Koman  Law. 
One  could  as  well  construct  a  zoology  in  the 
same  terms.  Christian  thought  has  been  bewil- 
dered and  Christian  instinct  well-nigh  defeated 
by  the  centuries  of  logically  coherent  but  empty 
systems  of  doctrine  concerning  the  work  of 
Christ.  His  terms  are  biological;  theirs  are 
legal.  It  may  be  ages  yet  before  we  recover 
from  the  misfortune  of  having  had  the  truth 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  135 

of  Christ  interpreted  and  fixed  by  jurists  and 
logicians  instead  of  by  naturalists  and  men 
of  science.  It  is  much  as  though  the  ratio- 
nale of  the  circulation  of  the  blood  had  been 
wrought  out  by  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  or  the 
germ  theory  of  disease  interpreted  by  Black- 
stone,  or  the  doctrine  of  evolution  formulated 
by  a  legislative  council.  The  Christ  is  inti- 
mately and  vitally  concerned  with  the  eternal 
life  of  men,  but  the  question  involved  is  of 
their  living  or  perishing,  and  not  of  a  sys- 
tem of  judicial  rewards  and  penalties.  "When 
Professor  Drummond  published  his  "Natural 
Law  in  the  Spiritual  World,"  it  was  the  title 
rather  than  the  argument  which  gave  it  its 
vogue.  Before  and  since  that  time  multitudes 
of  men  have  been  attempting  to  give  utterance 
to  the  same  conception.  Religious  thought  is 
striving  to  escape  from  the  dreary  fortress  of 
law  to  the  open  world  of  nature.  I  venture 
to  think  that  Darwin  and  the  martyrs  of  natu- 
ral science  have  done  more  to  make  the  word 
of  Christ  intelligible  than  have  Augustine  and 
the  theologians.  It  is  little  less  than  marvel- 
lous, the  way  in  which  the  words  of  Jesus  fit 
in  with  the  forms  of  thought  which  are  to-day 
current.  They  are  life,  generation,  survival  of 
the  fit,  perishing  of  the  unfit,  tree  and  fruit, 


136  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

multiplication  by  cell  growth  as  yeast,  opera- 
tion by  chemical  contact  as  salt,  dying  of  the 
lonely  seed  to  produce  much  fruit,  imposition 
of  a  higher  form  of  life  upon  a  lower  by  being 
born  from  above,  grafting  a  new  scion  upon  a 
wild  stock,  the  phenomena  of  plant  growth 
from  the  seed  through  the  blade,  the  ear,  and 
the  matured  grain,  and,  finally,  the  attainment 
of  an  individual  life  which  has  an  eternal  qual- 
ity. The  claim  made  for  the  Son  of  Man  is 
that  he  has  to  do  with  this  vital  process  in 
a  vital  fashion  from  the  beginning  of  the  ages 
to  the  end  of  them.  This  claim  may  or  may 
not  be  more  difficult  for  thoughtful  men  to 
admit  than  the  claim  that  he  wrought  out  a 
means  of  legal  escape  for  some  men  from  a 
judicial  sentence.  But  whatever  difficulty  does 
attach  to  it  is  an  intellectual  and  not  an  ethi- 
cal one.  It  may  be  incredible,  but  it  is  not 
immoral.  Ko  one  will  deny  that  the  wages 
of  lawlessness  is  death,  whatever  he  may  think 
about  eternal  life  being  the  gift  of  God  through 
Jesus  Christ  our  Lord. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  where  we  may 
profitably  glance  at  the  arguments  for  "Con- 
ditional Immortality  "  which  have  been  at  pre- 
vious times  proposed.  The  belief  has  always 
been  more  or  less  prevalent  within  Christen- 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  137 

dom.  As  we  have  already  seen,  it  was  held  by 
most  of  the  early  Fathers,  though  in  a  very  con- 
fused and  contradictory  fashion.  After  the  tri- 
umph of  Augustine's  legal  system  of  theology, 
it  practically  disappeared.  But  the  differences 
among  men,  both  as  to  their  moral  opportuni- 
ties and  their  moral  natures,  is  always  so  palpa- 
ble that  the  Christian  mind  could  not  remain 
satisfied  with  Augustine's  mechanical  notions 
of  an  universal  resurrection  and  a  hard  and  fast 
division  of  all  men  between  an  eternal  heaven 
and  an  eternal  hell.  Out  of  this  revolt  grew 
the  highly  elaborate,  but  equally  artificial,  de- 
vice of  Purgatory.  This  device  remained  satis- 
factory until  the  authority  of  the  Church,  upon 
which  it  depended,  broke  down  in  the  sixteenth 
century.  Thea  the  old  question  emerged  again. 
Do  the  "  wicked  "  live  eternally  ?  And  is  there 
no  remede  for  their  woe  ?  On  the  assumption 
that  every  human  being  is  immortal  in  virtue 
of  his  manhood,  there  seemed  to  be  no  escape 
from  a  conclusion  so  dreadful  that  no  man  can 
contemplate  it  for  the  bulk  of  his  fellows  and 
still  find  life  tolerable.  Judged  by  any  moral 
standard,  the  proportion  of  the  "wicked"  to 
the  "  righteous  "  is,  and  always  has  been,  over- 
whelming. If  they  are  so  constituted  by  na- 
ture that  the  poor  boon  of  extinction  is  forever 


138  EVOLUTION   OF  IMMORTALITY 

impossible  for  them,  what  can  be  thought  of  a 
Creator  who  wantonly  fashions  such  Franken- 
stein monsters?  Some  relief  for  the  imagina- 
tion and  the  moral  sense  must  be  had  at  any 
cost.  Some  have  pleased  themselves  with  fan- 
cying an  universal  "restoration"  wherein  the 
multitudinous  "wicked,"  having  learned  good- 
ness through  the  experience  of  asonian  suffer- 
ing, shall  win  their  way  to  blessedness.  But 
this  consolatory  belief  can  only  be  held  at  the 
expense  of  confusion  of  thought.  "When  it  is 
once  steadfastly  held  up  before  the  understand- 
ing, it  breaks  up  by  its  essential  incoherence. 
The  only  alternatives  which  will  bear  the  test 
which  reason  and  conscience  must  apply  are 
either  (1)  that  "  death  ends  all "  for  every  indi- 
vidual ;  or  (2)  that  immortality  is  a  possibility 
for  those  individuals  to  whom  it  would  be  a 
boon.  There  is  much  reason  to  believe  that 
the  first  alternative  is  becoming  more  and 
more  widely  accepted,  becaqse  the  second  has 
been  so  generally  forgotten.  One  wonders  at 
first  why  the  doctrine  of  conditional  immor- 
tality has  been  so  little  operative,  seeing  that 
it  has  had  such  powerful  advocates.  When  we 
remember  that  throughout  the  Kew  Testament 
the  hope  of  resurrection  is  invariably  based 
upon  a  belief  in  the  individual  having  been 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  139 

previously  "united  to  Christ,"  and  that  no 
other  way  of  "attaining  to  the  resurrection 
from  the  dead  "  is  intimated,  it  is  strange  that 
the  advocacy  of  this  doctrine  in  modern  times 
has  been  so  generally  brushed  aside  as  a  va- 
gary. In  the  appeal  to  Scripture  it  is  sustained, 
and  the  decision  is  concurred  in  by  the  logic  of 
the  case.  It  has  been  maintained  by  some  of 
the  most  learned  and  able  men  of  modern  times. 
Dodwell  and  Priestley  and  Whately  and  Hamp- 
den and  Rothe  and  Edward  White,  together 
with  Spinoza  and  Goethe  and  Lotze,  surely 
cannot  be  dismissed  as  fantastic  or  whimsical. 
And  yet  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  their 
arguments  have  failed  to  produce  any  deep  or 
wide  impression.  The  drift  appears  to  be 
steadily  toward  a  denial  of  future  life  to  all 
men  as  the  only  practicable  means  of  relief 
from  the  intolerable  burden  which  the  accep- 
tance of  an  eternal  heaven  and  hell  lays  upon 
the  imagination  and  the  emotion  of  sympathy. 
There  must  be  some  reason  for  this.  Either 
the  advocates  of  conditional  immortality  have 
introduced  some  element  which  renders  it  im- 
possible, or  they  have  left  out  some  element 
which  is  needful,  or  they  have  built  upon  a 
wrong  foundation.  I  think  they  have  done 
all  three. 


140  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Their  fundamental  error  is  one  which  has 
been  already  dwelt  upon.  In  all  their  philoso- 
phizing they  have  dealt  with  "man"  instead 
of  with  men.  They  have  assumed  that  the 
zoological  classification  which  sets  "Man"  in 
a  group  by  himself  for  physical  reasons  is 
a  valid  classification  for  psychical  purposes. 
They  have  taken  for  granted  that  the  ques- 
tion of  eternal  life  is  the  same  question  for  all 
individuals,  and  that  every  individual  stands 
before  it  in  the  same  position,  because  he  is  a 
"man"  in  this  sense  and  for  this  purpose. 
The  real  state  of  the  case  is,  the  question 
only  concerns  those  who  have  reached  the 
stage  of  development  where  it  begins  to  have 
a  meaning.  Before  the  inquiry  concerning 
the  future  life  of  an  individual  can  have  any 
cogency,  there  is  a  previous  question,  —  Is  he 
living  now?  This  is  the  point  at  which 
the  supreme  biological  classification  must  be 
attempted. 

In  the  second  place,  because  they  have 
assumed  that  all  human  beings,  as  human 
beings,  are  in  like  situation  as  candidates  for 
immortality,  they  have  been  compelled  to  an- 
nounce conditions  of  success  which  are  clearly 
inapplicable  and  artificial.  Some  of  the  Fathers 
expect  eternal  life   only  for   those  w^ho  have 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  141 

been  baptized ;  others  only  for  those  who  have 
received  the  "body  and  blood  of  Christ"  in  the 
holv  sacrament.  At  a  later  date  some  make  it 
to  depend  upon  an  intelligent  acceptance  of 
the  historical  Christ  and  an  act  of  faith  in  him. 
The  learned  non-juror,  Dr.  Dodwell,  with  a 
frank  logic  which  one  can  but  admire,  writes 
a  treatise  to  prove  "from  the  Scriptures  and 
the  first  Fathers  that  the  soul  is  a  principle 
naturally  mortal,  but  immortalized  actually 
by  its  union  with  the  divine  baptismal  Spirit. 
Wherein  it  is  established  that  since  the  Apos- 
tles none  have  the  power  of  giving  the  divine 
immortalizing  Spirit  but  only  the  Bishops ! " 
The  philosophers  have  made  eternal  life  to 
depend  upon  intellectual  advance,  l^ow,  these 
conditions  named  are  so  artificial,  arbitrary, 
meagre,  so  impossible  of  application  for  the 
great  multitudes  of  humanity,  so  insignificant 
in  comparison  of  the  infinite  issue  involved, 
that  it  is  little  wonder  their  exhibition  secures 
but  scant  attention.  What  is  desired  and  will 
be  thankfully  received  is  a  law  of  eternal  life 
which  will  exhibit  that  majestic  sweep  of 
movement,  that  same  naturalness  and  moral 
equity,  which  nature  shows,  and  which  will  be 
free  from  all  charge  of  favoritism  as  nature  is. 
This  law  would  seem  to  be  clear  enough  if  we 


142  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

frankly  recognize  the  facts  of  life.  Immor- 
tality is  a  moral  achievement,  possible  where 
goodness  is,  impossible  where  goodness  is  not. 
But,  if  this  be  so,  is  it  not  by  that  fact 
loosened  from  all  dependence  upon  the  work 
of  Christ?  The  answer  is,  that  depends  upon 
what  you  mean  by  Christ.  If  the  Christ  be 
figured  only  as  a  personage  in  human  history, 
and  his  work  as  occupying  a  certain  place  and 
date  in  space  and  time,  then  the  objection 
would  be  fatal.  Then  neither  Abraham  nor 
Moses,  Job  nor  Guatama,  would  owe  their  life 
to  him.  But  he  did  not  define  himself  so  mea- 
grely. He  was  in  the  beginning  with  God,  he 
was  "Wisdom  in  all  ages;  he  was  crucified  in 
God  before  the  world  was.  A  believer  in  the 
divinity  of  Christ  must  not  shrink  from  the 
implications  of  his  belief.  Divinity  is  not  to 
be  brought  within  the  categories  of  duration 
and  extension.  The  eternal  spirit  of  life  is 
not  functionless  until  set  in  play  in  an  upper 
chamber  in  Jerusalem  a.d.  33.  It  is  not  essen- 
tial that  the  work  done  by  the  Christ  should 
be  confined  to  those  who  know  him  by  his 
Judean  name  of  Jesus.  "We  believe  his  own 
teaching  to  be  that  the  humane  element  in 
God  is  eternal.  The  phrases  used  in  the  l^ew 
Testament  may  therefore  be  regarded  as  only 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  143 

new  names  for  an  old  thing.  Being  "united 
to  Christ,"  being  "born  from  above,"  the 
"life  hid  with  Christ  in  God,"  and  such  like, 
are  but  the  Christian  terminology  for  phenom- 
ena which  show  themselves  before  and  outside 
of  the  Christian  Era.  But  they  are  moral 
phenomena  with  which  Christ  claims  a  vital 
connection,  even  though  they  be  called  by  very 
different  names  from  the  ones  which  his  dis- 
ciples use.  His  contention  is  that  eternal  life 
is  attained  through  goodness ;  and  that  where- 
ever  goodness  is,  he  is. 


"  Sleep'st  thou  indeed?  or  is  Thy  spirit  fled 
At  large  among  the  dead? 
Whether  in  Eden's  bowers  Thy  welcome  voice 
Wake  Abraham  to  rejoice, 
Or  in  some  drearier  scene  Thine  eye  controls 
The  thronging  band  of  souls ; 
That,  as  Thy  blood  won  earth,  Thine  agony 
Might  set  the  shadowy  realm  from  sin  and  sorrow 
free?"  — Keble. 


144 


CHAPTER  XIY 

BiBDS  which  are  bred  in  subarctic  regions 
must  perish  unless  they  become  able,  at  the 
proper  time,  to  cross  land  and  sea  to  a  summer 
clime.  Whether  any  one  of  them  shall  be  able 
to  do  this,  depends  upon  its  growth  of  wing, 
its  instinct  of  direction,  and  its  strength  to  sus- 
tain its  flight.  Between  the  one  who  can  and 
the  one  who  cannot  is  a  difference  of  a  few 
millimeters'  length  of  pinion  and  a  few  grains, 
more  or  less,  of  nourishment.  The  transit  for 
the  individual  man  from  this  stage  of  being  to 
the  one  which  lies  beyond  we  believe  to  be 
a  question  of  the  vigor  of  moral  personality. 
Is  there  any  reason  to  believe  that  the  passage 
has  ever  been  effected?  A  single  instance 
would  be  worth  volumes  of  argument.  It 
would  bring  the  whole  matter  out  of  the  ab- 
stract into  the  concrete.  Moreover,  it  would 
transform  the  whole  lives  of  all  those  to  whom 
such  information  might  come.  If  we  could  find 
one  single  case  of  a  man  having  passed  through 
corporal  death,  and   having  thereafter  shown 

L  145 


146  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

to  living  man  by  word  or  sight  or  speech  that 
he  is  the  same  personality  who  died,  it  would 
revolutionize  human  life.  Above  all,  if  he 
should  give  an  intelligible  account,  not  of  where 
he  has  gone  to,  but  of  how  he  got  there,  the 
riddle  of  the  universe  would  be  read.  It  would 
be  as  though  some  one  had  found  a  practicable 
ford  across  an  encompassing  river  which  had 
always  been  thought  unfordable.  It  would 
change  the  whole  temper  and  manner  of  life 
of  those  who  live  this  side.  It  would  bring 
hope  concerning  the  fate  of  that  multitude  who 
had  essayed  the  same  crossing,  and  had  seemed 
to  have  been  drowned. 

There  are  now  living  several  hundred  millions 
of  people  who  believe  such  a  crossing  to  have 
been  made  in  one  celebrated  case.  They  be- 
lieve that  it  occurred  two  thousand  years  ago, 
sometime  between  a  Friday  evening  and  a 
Sunday  morning,  in  the  City  of  Jerusalem, 
and  that  the  man's  name  was  Jesus.  I  under- 
stand quite  well  how  the  scientist  and  the  stu- 
dent of  evidences  may  feel  at  this  suggestion, 
like  turning  away  with  impatience.  The  event 
is  so  remote,  the  evidence  is  so  scanty,  the  as- 
sertion is  so  incredible,  that  busy  men  cannot 
be  expected  to  take  it  seriously.  Maybe  so. 
It  is  more  than  likely  that  a  very  moderate 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  147 

cross-examination  would  break  down  every  wit- 
ness, and  would  show  contradictions  in  the 
testimony.  But  still  the  fact  remains  that 
hundreds  of  millions  of  people  have  believed 
and  do  believe  it  to  be  a  real  occurrence.  These 
also  are  people  whose  average  intelligence  is, 
upon  the  whole,  higher  than  that  of  any  equal 
number  of  people  in  the  world.  No  like  num- 
ber of  people  approach  them  in  moral  earnest- 
ness or  in  general  truthfulness.  This  much  at 
least  may  be  said  of  Christians.  If  it  be  ob- 
jected that  their  belief  in  the  alleged  reappear- 
ance of  Jesus  after  his  death  is  only  an  article 
of  faith  which  they  receive  after  they  have 
on  other  grounds  become  Christians,  then  the 
question  arises,  What  accounts  for  Christianity  ? 
The  world  in  Christ's  time  did  not  look  for  a 
future  life  of  the  individual ;  to-day  it  looks  for 
it  even  more  universally  than  the  facts  war- 
rant. What  has  caused  the  change  of  belief? 
The  cause  is  so  evident  that  no  student  of  his- 
tory, so  far  as  I  am  aware,  questions  it.  It  is 
due  to  the  assured  conviction  of  the  friends  of 
Jesus  that  they  saw  and  talked  with  him,  in 
his  own  person,  after  his  death.  No  one  now 
doubts  the  sincerity  of  their  conviction.  It  is 
conceivable  that  they  were  mistaken.  But  in 
that  case  we  have  that  stupendous  fabric  which 


148  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

we  call  Christianity,  that  complex  structure  of 
morals,  social  order,  political  energy,  and  reli- 
gious power,  resting  upon  nothing.  Now  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  a  credulity  of  scepticism  as 
well  as  a  credulity  of  belief.  The  sensible  man 
tries  to  avoid  them  both,  to  look  at  things  as 
they  really  are,  and  in  any  case  to  accept  the 
explanation  which  best  explains.  Of  course, 
if  one  take  the  position  that  the  reappearance 
of  Jesus  after  his  death  is  an  impossibiUty,  and 
that  no  kind  nor  amount  of  evidence  would  con- 
vince him,  there  is  nothing  to  be  said  except 
that  he  is  a  dogmatist  to  whom  science  cannot 
speak.  Let  it  be  well  understood  right  here 
that  the  question  involved  is  not  of  the  "  super- 
natural "  as  opposed  to  the  "  natural."  If  Jesus 
survived  his  own  death,  it  was  because  it  was 
natural  for  him  and  such  as  him  to  do  so.  The 
antithesis  of  natural  and  supernatural  is  a  mere 
imagination.  The  only  true  classification  is 
the  real  and  the  unreal.  Whatever  is  real  is 
natural,  for  whenever  its  reality  is  established 
the  definition  of  nature  must  be  extended  to 
include  it. 

Assuming  the  story  of  the  Gospels  to  be 
honest, — and  I  do  not  know  of  any  scholar 
who  now  questions  its  honesty,  —  it  is  clear 
that  between  five  hundred  and  a  thousand  of 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  149 

Jesus'  friends  who  knew  him  in  life  believed 
that  tliey  had  seen  hira  again  after  his  death. 
It  must  be  acknowledged  that  the  accounts  are 
confused  and  in  some  details  contradictory,  but 
in  essentials  they  are  clear  enough.  The  dis- 
ciples were  not  looking  for  his  reappearance, 
and  were  very  slow  to  believe  it  when  it  oc- 
curred. After  his  execution  they  gave  up  all 
expectation  of  seeing  fulfilled  the  programme 
of  a  kingdom  which  they  had  given  adhesion  to. 
It  is  clear  alike  that  they  were  grievously  dis- 
appointed, and  that  they  believed  their  disap- 
pointment to  be  irremediable.  They  gave  it 
all  up  and  proposed  to  go  about  their  business. 
They  thought  this  had  been  he  who  should 
have  redeemed  Israel,  but  he  had  died  and 
their  dream  was  at  an  end.  If  they  had  fab- 
ricated the  story  they  would  have  excused  their 
incredulity  by  pleading  that  they  had  misun- 
derstood his  intentions.  On  the  contrary,  they 
blame  themselves  for  not  having  at  once  recog- 
nized that  this  was  part  of  his  programme. 
Something  happened,  suddenly,  which  changed 
the  whole  situation  for  them,  and  in  consequence 
changed  their  whole  lives.  What  was  it  which 
did  happen  ?  The  vulgar  answer  is,  —  the  dead 
body  of  Jesus  came  to  life  again,  and  their 
senses  convinced  them  of  the  fact.    But  this 


150  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

is  not  the  impression,  or  at  any  rate  is  by  no 
means  the  whole  impression,  which  the  story 
produces  when  it  is  candidly  examined.  It  is 
very  curious  that  in  every  case  the  person  to 
whom  Jesus  reappeared  failed  at  first  to  recog- 
nize him.  The  two  Marys  say  that  when  they 
came  to  the  sepulchre  early  Sunday  morning 
to  prepare  the  body  for  burial  they  found  it 
gone,  and  they  saw  either  one  or  two  luminous 
apparitions  of  some  sort,  —  their  accounts  do 
not  agree,  —  w^ho  in  some  way  conveyed  to 
them  the  impression  that  they  must  go  at  once 
and  tell  John  and  Peter,  the  two  most  intimate 
friends  of  the  dead  man.  They  say  that  they 
were  frightened  beyond  measure,  and  bewil- 
dered. It  would  seem  that  one  of  them  hur- 
ried into  town  to  tell  what  she  had  seen,  while 
the  other,  Mary  Magdalene,  waited  hesitatingly 
to  see  what  farther  might  befall.  While  she 
thus  stood,  Jesus  in  some  form  appeared.  She 
had  known  him  intimately,  and  had  seen  him 
three  days  before ;  but  when  she  saw  him  now 
she  failed  to  recognize  him,  "supposing  him  to 
be  the  gardener."  When  he  spoke,  something 
about  him  recalled  to  her  his  identity  ;  but  when 
she  would  have  verified  her  sight  and  hearing 
by  touching  him,  he  forbade  her.  When  the 
other  Mary  told  her  story  to  the  disciples  in 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  151 

the  city,  they  refused  absolutely  to  believe  her. 
At  the  same  time  two  of  them  went  back  with 
her  to  see  what  had  happened,  but  before  they 
reached  the  garden  Jesus  met  them,  spoke  to 
them  in  his  own  peculiar  way,  and  made  a 
rendezvous  with  them  later  in  another  prov- 
ince. The  next  day,  while  two  of  them  were 
on  their  way  to  the  rendezvous,  and  were  talk- 
ing as  they  walked,  they  suddenly  found  a 
stranger  walking  beside  them.  He  joined  in 
their  conversation,  stayed  with  them  all  after- 
noon, went  with  them  to  their  inn,  sat  down 
at  supper  with  them ;  but  when  it  came  to 
the  actual  eating  he  vanished,  and  as  he  van- 
ished they  recognized  him.  The  following 
Sunday  night,  while  a  number  of  his  friends 
were  together  in  an  upper  room  in  the  city, 
with  the  doors  carefully  barred  for  fear  of 
being  arrested  as  conspirators,  he  suddenly 
appeared  among  them  and  asked  for  food, 
which  he  took  and  ate,  and  vanished.  A  week 
later  he  did  the  same  thing  under  the  same 
circumstances;  and  finding  there  a  friend  who 
had  not  been  present  the  previous  Sunday,  and 
had  expressed  absolute  incredulity,  he  asked 
him  to  touch  him  and  convince  himself  that  it 
was  really  he,  and  vanished.  Up  to  this  point 
they  do  not  seem  to  have  been  able  to  make 


152  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

anything  coherent  out  of  his  reappearances. 
They  were  rejoiced  at  this  proof  of  his  con- 
tinued existence,  but  they  did  not  connect  it 
in  any  practical  way  with  the  plans  which  had 
been  broken  off  by  his  execution.  They  clearly 
believed  that  he  had  reappeared,  but  his  ap- 
pearance had  no  meaning  or  purpose  for  thera. 
They  gradually  separated,  and  those  of  them 
who  did  not  live  in  the  city  went  back  to  their 
homes  and  resumed  their  several  occupations. 
Some  weeks  later  half  a  dozen  of  thera  were 
out  in  boats  fishing  in  a  lake  more  than  fifty 
miles  away.  "When  they  rowed  ashore  they 
saw  a  man  standing  by  a  fire  of  coals  on  the 
beach,  upon  which  fire  he  bade  them  broil 
some  of  their  fish  and  break  their  fast.  Once 
again  they  failed  to  recognize  him  until  he 
had  spoken.  But  this  time  he  took  up  again 
the  discussion  of  his  plans  concerning  the  gos- 
pel of  life,  gave  his  disciples  their  final  instruc- 
tions, and  outlined  their  policy,  charging  them 
to  reassemble  at  the  capital  and  wait  further 
developments.  Even  yet  they  were  perplexed, 
for  "  when  they  saw  him  they  worshipped,  but 
some  were  sceptical."  They  obeyed  his  in- 
structions, however,  laid  down  their  business, 
and  returned  to  the  city.  There,  six  weeks 
after  his  execution,  he  appeared  in  their  midst 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  153 

for  the  last  time,  and  after  a  few  affectionate 
words,  he  disappeared  in  a  luminous  cloud,  and 
they  never  saw  him  again. 

Now,  assuming,  as  we  must,  that  the  story  is 
an  honest  one,  it  is  a  very  strange  one.  If  it 
were  told  of  any  ordinary  man,  we  could  only 
look  at  it  a  little  for  its  curiosity  and  then  dis- 
miss it.  Two  considerations,  however,  preclude 
us  from  dealing  with  it  after  this  rough  and 
ready  fashion.  The  first  is,  that  it  is  related 
to  the  previous  life  of  a  personality  which  is 
altogether  remarkable.  The  second  is  that  it 
has  wrought  such  momentous  results  in  the 
course  of  human  history.  Wherever  the  story 
has  gone  it  has  transformed  human  life.  This 
story  is  the  essential  element  of  the  Christian 
Gospel.  Its  early  apostles  and  evangelists 
preached  in  set  terms  the  "  Gospel  of  the  Kesur- 
rection."  Their  burden  was  not  atonement  or 
redemption  or  heaven  and  hell,  as  is  commonly 
assumed,  but  the  announcement  of  a  possible 
immortality.  This  is  what  gained  them  a 
hearing.  It  was  "good  news,"  because  first 
of  all  it  was  news.  We  are  in  the  habit  of 
assuming,  mistakenly,  that  the  goodness  of  the 
news  was  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  a  way 
had  been  opened  whereby  all  men,  who  must 
necessarily  live  forever  in  any  case,  might  live 


154  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

blissfully  instead  of  painfully.  But  this,  in 
point  of  fact,  was  not  the  case.  Men  who 
could  comprehend  the  good  news  welcomed  it 
with  the  same  kind  of  eagerness  as  would  a 
man  to-day  to  whom  a  plan  should  be  unfolded 
whereby  he  could  certainly  add  fifty,  a  hun- 
dred, a  thousand,  years  to  his  natural  life. 
This  was  the  preaching  of  the  apostles,  that 
in  the  person  of  Jesus  "  immortality  was 
brought  to  light."  St.  Paul  says  plainly 
that  if  his  Gospel  should  break  down  at  this 
point  it  would  be  worthless.  Even  though 
Jesus  might  have  lived  and  taught  and  suf- 
fered, "if  he  be  not  risen  then  your  faith  is 
but  emptiness."  Their  argument  was  that  the 
man  Jesus  had  definitely  realized  the  process 
whereby  a  natural  human  being  might  attain 
to  the  possession  of  a  psychical  life  so  exalted 
in  quality  and  so  tenacious  in  substance  that 
corporal  death  could  not  break  it  down;  that 
he  had  achieved  it  for  himself  at  an  incalcula- 
ble cost ;  that  he  had  passed  through  death  and 
conquered  it,  having  "shown  himself  alive  by 
many  infallible  proofs  "  ;  and  that  in  this  he  had 
become  a  kind  of  first  fruits  of  a  human  har- 
vest which  might  be  great  or  small  as  the  event 
i  should  prove.  It  is  probably  quite  impossible 
for  us  to  realize  with  what  enthusiasm  this  mes- 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  155 

sage  was  received  by,  or  how  overwhelmingly 
it  took  possession  of,  the  minds  and  imagina- 
tions of  men  who  before  had  no  expectation 
of  a  future  life  of  any  kind.  The  primitive 
appeal  of  the  Gospel  was  to  the  supreme  aspira- 
tion of  all  organized  creatures,  the  "lust  of  liv- 
ing!" It  offered  extended  existence  to  those 
who  had  looked  for  destruction.  This  appeal 
is  incalculably  more  potent  than  the  one  now 
commonly  addressed  to  the  desire  for  happi- 
ness or  the  fear  of  misery.  It  explains  at  once 
the  eager  welcome  given  the  Gospel  in  the 
early  ages  and  the  languid  acceptance  ac- 
corded it  now.  It  was  literally  a  proffered 
alternative  of  life  and  death.  No  wonder 
Paul  accounted  all  things  "but  dung  that  he 
might  know  Christ  and  the  power  of  his  resur- 
rection and  attain  unto  the  resurrection  of  the 
dead."  And  little  wonder  that  men  to-day  who 
have  fallen  into  the  way  of  thinking  that  they 
are  immortal  anyway,  will  snatch  at  the  pleas- 
ures of  the  life  which  now  is,  and  trust  to  good 
fortune  to  escape  any  very  intolerable  misery 
in  that  to  come.  Upon  this  attitude  it  is  hard 
to  see  how  the  gospel  of  deliverance  from  pen- 
alty can  make  much  impression.  To  obey  it 
involves  cost,  lays  on  a  cross.  To  disregard 
it  opens  the  door  to  present  pleasure.    The 


156  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

allurement  of  a  present  pleasure  is  usually  a 
more  potent  stimulus  than  the  apprehension 
of  a  remote  pain.  But  if  it  be  true  that  the 
stake  at  issue  is  not  either  the  pleasure  or  the 
pain  of  life,  but  the  life  itself,  the  situation  be- 
comes more  tragic.  The  Gospel  contained  in 
the  resurrection  of  Christ  is  the  last  term  in 
an  evolutionary  process  which  begins  with  the 
eternal  chaos  and  reaches  its  culmination  in 
the  man  become  immortal.  The  process  is  as 
inexorable  as  it  is  beneficent.  The  gift  of  life 
is  strewn  with  a  lavish  hand.  But  every  living 
creature  receives  so  much  as  he  is  able  to  ap- 
propriate, and  no  more.  In  this  there  is  no 
inequity.  This  is  nature's  way,  and  nature's 
way  is  God's  way.  This  way  is  the  "  Way  of 
Life  "  from  the  protoplasmic  slime  to  the  Son 
of  Man. 


"  In  considering  questions  of  this  sort  we  ought 
not  to  listen  for  a  moment  to  those  frequent,  but 
impertinent,  questions  that  are  brought  forward 
with  the  view  of  superseding  the  inquiry;  such, 
for  example,  as  these :  '  What  good  is  answered  by 
the  alleged  extra-natural  occurrences?'  or,  *  Is  it 
worthy  of  the  supreme  wisdom  to  permit  them?' 
and  so  forth.  The  question  is  one  first  of  testi- 
mony, to  be  judged  on  the  established  principles  of 
evidence,  and  then  of  physiology;  but  neither  of 
theology  nor  of  morals."  —  Isaac  Taylor. 


158 


CHAPTER  XV 

So  far  as  we  can  see  there  is  not  only  no  liv- 
ing personality  apart  from  a  material  organiza- 
tion, but  a  "  disembodied  spirit "  is  unthinkable. 
This  is  true  so  far  as  human  thought  is  con- 
cerned even  of  God.  We  cannot  formulate  the 
idea  of  the  "absolute  God."  That  concep- 
tion is  no  more  than  an  algebraic  symbol.  In 
practice  we  cannot  think  of  God  apart  from 
thought  of  the  universe.  If  we  try  to  do  so  we 
are  compelled  still  to  keep  in  mind  the  universe 
as  the  thing  outside  of  which  or  over  against 
which  God  is.  For  the  purposes  of  human 
thinking,  matter  is  as  eternal  and  as  unbounded 
as  God  is.  This  is  not  to  say  that  it  is  so  "  abso- 
lutely." "We  know  nothing  about  "  absolute  " 
being.  But  the  practical  reason  cannot  formu- 
late the  idea  of  a  God  without  a  universe,  or  of 
a  soul  without  a  body.  If  any  one  fancy  he  can 
do  so  let  him  make  the  experiment. 

This  is  why  the  question  of  the  "  resurrection 
of  the  body  "  becomes  of  such  supreme  moment. 
The  contribution  which  Christianity  has  made 
169 


160  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

to  belief  in  a  future  life  really  does  not  concern 
the  spirit,  but  the  body.  People  had  for  ages 
before  Christ  had  a  notion  of  some  kind  of  neb- 
ulous and  phantasmal  survival  of  the  spirit,  but 
the  belief  was  at  its  best  practically  inoperative. 
A  spirit  with  no  material  organ  for  expressing 
itself  puts  to  confusion  all  our  ideas  as  to  what 
a  human  being  is.  The  body  is  just  as  essential 
a  component  part  of  our  idea  of  a  man  as  the 
soul  is.  It  is  as  easy  to  think  of  the  body  be- 
coming immortal  without  a  soul  as  to  think  of 
the  spirit  becoming  immortal  without  a  body. 
We  instinctively  revolt  against  either  idea  once 
we  get  it  clearly  before  the  mind.  This  is  the 
reason  why  the  physiologist  finds  it  so  difficult 
to  believe  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  It  is 
only  because  he  sees  more  clearly  than  other 
men  do  the  constant  and  essential  interdepend- 
ence of  soul  and  body.  The  ground  of  his 
scepticism  is  sound.  There  is  no  known  form 
of  energy  separate  from  matter.  The  soul  can- 
not flit  across  the  river  alone.  'Nov  is  it  any 
relief  to  think  of  it  existing  even  temporarily 
in  a  quiescent  state  while  waiting  for  the  body. 
It  cannot  wait.  An  individual  life  must  be  con- 
tinuous or  else  not  be  at  all.  It  cannot  stop 
and  go  on  again.  The  Easter  imagery  of  the 
egg  and  the  butterfly  will  not  bear  scientific  ex- 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  161 

amination.  The  caterpillar,  the  imago,  and  the 
butterfly  are  all  included  in  one  cycle,  to  be 
sure,  but  the  continuity  of  the  individual  is 
broken  at  each  stage  of  the  progression,  and 
the  cycle  when  completed  returns  upon  itself. 
It  goes  nowhere.  What  we  are  in  search  of  is 
a  continuous  life  of  the  individual.  To  this  end 
St.  Paul  affirms  that  there  is  a  natural  body 
and  there  is  a  spiritual  body.  If  so,  where  is 
it  ?  How  does  it  grow  ?  "What  are  its  quali- 
ties ?  What  is  its  relation  to  that  which  we 
call  matter  ?  What  reason  has  the  apostle  for 
making  his  assertion  ?  His  reason  is  perfectly 
obvious.  He  asserts  that  there  is  a  "  spiritual " 
body  because  he  has  seen  one. 

The  reports  of  the  reappearance  of  Jesus  may 
be  examined  without  irreverence  because  we 
are  so  deeply  concerned  to  know  the  facts  and 
their  significance.  There  is  a  ndivetS  about 
the  accounts  in  the  Gospels  which  is  very  strik- 
ing, and  which  is  greatly  to  the  advantage  of 
one  who  seeks  for  the  actual  facts.  They  rep- 
resent the  risen  Christ  as  a  living  man  like  other 
men,  and  at  the  same  time  strangely  unlike, 
and  they  make  no  attempt  to  adjust  the  contra- 
dictions. He  is  independent  of  the  laws  of 
matter,  and  at  the  same  time  he  conforms  to 
some  of  them.   He  suddenly  appears  in  a  lighted 

J^-^  OF  THE    ^^ 


162  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

room  when  the  doors  are  locked,  but  at  the  same 
time  they  at  least  think  they  see  him  eat  and 
drink.  Again,  he  communicates  with  them  by 
some  kind  of  spoken  language,  but  is  at  the  same 
time  invisible.  He  is  walking  along  the  road 
to  Emmaus,  and  presently  is  standing  on  the 
beach  of  the  Galilean  Lake,  fifty  miles  away. 
They  see  him  and  take  him  for  a  stranger,  but 
the  next  moment  they  recognize  him.  We  seem, 
in  a  word,  to  be  in  the  presence  of  something 
which  is  both  material  and  immaterial,  some- 
thing which  is  cognizable  by  the  senses,  and 
which  at  the  same  time  plays  fast  and  loose 
with  sense  perceptions.  There  would  seem  to 
be  only  two  reasonable  attitudes  toward  the 
story  open  to  us.  Either  we  may  dismiss  it  al- 
together as  an  Oriental  fantasy,  or  we  must 
extend  our  definitions  of  nature  so  as  to  include 
its  phenomena.  Of  course  one  may,  if  he  will, 
look  at  it  from  a  distance  as  a  sacred  region 
into  which  curiosity  dare  not  enter  and  where 
faith  alone  is  admissible.  But  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  sitting  down  at  the  entrance  of  a  holy 
ground  under  pretence  of  putting  off  one's  shoes, 
while  the  real  motive  is  either  indolence  or  fear. 
If  the  phenomena  under  consideration  are  facts 
at  all,  they  are  facts  which  are  meant  for  use. 
We  may  rightly  "  have  boldness  to  enter  into 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  163 

the  holiest,  by  a  new  and  living  way  which  he 
hath  consecrated  for  us  through  the  veil,  that  is 
to  say  his  flesh." 

The  most  remarkable  feat  which  modern 
science  has  accomplished  has  been  to  establish 
the  existence  of  that  strange  substance  known 
as  the  luminiferous  or  interstellar  ether^  the 
medium  through  which  the  "X  ray"  and  wire- 
less telegraphy  perform  their  work.  Its  exist- 
ence had  long  been  suspected,  now  it  is  known. 
Sir  Isaac  Newton  closes  his  "  Principia "  with 
this  prophetic  paragraph :  — 

"And  now  we  might  add  something  concerning 
a  most  subtle  spirit  which  pervades  and  lies  hid  in 
all  gross  bodies ;  by  the  force  and  action  of  which 
spirit  the  particles  of  bodies  mutually  attract  one 
another  at  near  distances  and  cohere  if  contiguous ; 
and  electric  bodies  separate,  and  light  is  emitted, 
reflected  and  heats  bodies ;  and  all  sensation  is  ex- 
cited, and  the  members  of  animal  bodies  move  at 
the  command  of  the  will,  namely  by  vibrations  of 
this  spirit  mutually  propagated  along  the  solid  fila- 
ments of  the  nerves  from  the  outward  organs  of 
sense  to  the  brain,  and  from  the  brain  to  the  mus- 
cles. But  these  things  cannot  be  explained  in  a 
few  words,  nor  are  we  furnished  with  that  suffi- 
ciency of  experiments  which  is  necessary  to  an  ac- 
curate determination  and  demonstration  of  the 
laws  by  which  this  elastic  spirit  operates." 


164  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMOKTALITY 

Now,  this  '^  subtle  spirit "  of  Sir  Isaac  has 
been  shown  to  be,  not  spirit  at  all,  but  a 
material  medium  which  fills  all  space  and  in- 
terpenetrates all  that  we  call  matter.  The 
"sufficiency  of  experiments"  which  Kewton 
lacked  have  been  made  by  Struve,  Helmholtz, 
Lord  Kelvin,  Dolbear,  Tesla,  Rontgen  and  a 
hundred  other  mathematicians  and  physicists. 
The  result  has  been  to  compel  a  new  defini- 
tion of  matter.  Extension,  ponderability,  form, 
dimension,  and  such  qualities  can  no  longer  be 
thought  sufficient  to  define  matter.  "  Empty  " 
space  can  no  longer  be  spoken  of,  for  no  por- 
tion of  space  is  empty.  It  can  no  longer  be 
said  that  "no  two  portions  of  matter  can 
occupy  the  same  space  at  the  same  time,"  for 
they  do  so  constantly.  Indeed,  it  seems  to  be 
a  very  condition  of  the  existence  of  the  matter 
which  we  see  that  it  should  lie  bathed  in  a  mat- 
ter which  we  do  not  see.  For  the  universal 
ether  is  matter.  As  Lord  Kelvin  has  demon- 
strated, it  shows  in  some  ways  the  phenom- 
ena of  a  highly  tenuous  fluid,  in  others  that  of 
an  infinitely  dense  solid,  and  in  still  others  the 
properties  of  a  jelly.  It  is  the  medium  through 
which  light  moves  by  waves  of  an  ascertained 
length,  electric  energy  by  waves  of  a  different 
length,  heat  by  still  a  third,  and  the  energy 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  165 

which  we  call  gravitation  by  some  means  not 
yet  ascertained.  It  has  been  weighed  and 
measured.  A  sphere  of  it  the  size  of  the  earth 
would,  if  compressed  to  the  density  of  earth, 
be  in  size  somewhere  between  a  marble  and 
an  orange.  It  is  the  medium  in  the  opaque 
flesh  through  which  the  invisible  rays  of  light 
pass  to  form  an  X-ray  photograph.  Its  waves 
flow  through  so  dense  a  mass  of  matter  as  a 
block  of  glass,  as  water  flows  through  a  sieve. 
It  is  the  medium  in  which  the  elemental  en- 
ergies of  heat,  light,  electricity,  and  possibly 
chemical  energy  do  their  work.  May  not  vital 
energy  be  concerned  with  it  as  well  ? 

I  venture  to  say  in  parenthesis  that  it  is 
not  easy  to  understand  why  the  physicists  are 
so  reluctant  to  admit  the  existence  of  such 
an  objective  fact  as  "Yital  Energy."  Surely 
there  are  abundant  phenomena  which  cannot 
be  forced  to  come  under  any  other  form  of 
energy  known.  Suppose  the  phrase  is  but  a 
name  for  a  set  of  phenomena  whose  essential 
nature  is  not  understood,  that  much  may  also 
be  said  of  all  the  other  categories  of  energy. 

It  is  now  more  than  twenty  years  since  two 
distinguished  English  men  of  science.  Professors 
Balfour  Stewart  and  P.  G.  Tait,  put  forth  hesi- 
tatingly a  theory  of  a  physical  basis  of  a  future 


166  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

life.  Starting  from  the  evident  double  truth 
that  all  psychical  activity  is  associated  with 
molecular  activity  in  the  matter  of  the  brain 
and  nerves,  while  at  the  same  time  physical 
and  psychical  phenomena  are  evidently  differ- 
ent things,  they  suggest  that  there  may  well  be 
a  tertimn  quid^  a  third  something,  which  serves 
as  the  nexus  between  them,  and  that  Ethereal 
Matter  may  be  such  a  thing. 

Each  thought  we  think,  each  emotion  we 
feel,  is  accompanied  by  certain  molecular  move- 
ments and  rearrangements  in  the  brain.  The 
psychical  activity  actually  builds  up  a  physical 
fabric  for  itself.  But  the  material  fabric  is 
every  moment  disintegrating,  and  at  death  falls 
into  ruin.  ITow,  suppose  that  before  that  ruin 
befalls,  the  soul  shall  have  been  able  to  build 
up,  as  it  were,  a  brain  within  the  brain,  a  body 
within  the  body,  something  like  that  which 
the  Orientals  have  for  ages  spoken  of  as  the 
"  Astral  Body."  Then,  when  the  body  of  flesh 
shall  crumble  away,  there  would  be  left  a  body, 
material  to  be  sure,  but  compacted  of  a  kind  of 
matter  which  behaves  quite  differently  from 
that  which  our  sense  perceptions  deal  with.  It 
is  a  material  which,  so  far  as  science  has  any- 
thing to  say,  is  essentially  indestructible.  It 
moves  freely  amongst  and  through   ordinary 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  167 

matter  without  let  or  hindrance.  It  is  not 
difficult  at  any  rate  to  form  a  picture  of  a  life 
based  upon  its  organization.  From  the  indi- 
vidual spirits  of  just  men  made  perfect  this 
present ''  muddy  vesture  of  decay  "  has  dropped 
away,  leaving  them  "  not  unclothed  but  clothed 
upon."  They  are  still  men.  They  have  rational 
souls  with  material  bodies  fit  to  sustain  and  to 
express  their  psychical  life.  The  matter  of 
their  bodies  is  obedient  to  the  laws  of  matter 
and  life,  but  to  the  laws  of  that  kind  of  life  and 
matter.  "  There  are  celestial  bodies  and  bodies 
terrestrial,"  and  each  has  its  own  modes  of 
action.  Such  Ethereal  bodies  compacted  with 
living  souls  would  of  necessity  inhabit  a  uni- 
verse of  their  own,  even  though  that  universe 
should  occupy  the  same  space  that  this  one 
does.  Neither  earth  nor  fire  nor  water  could 
in  the  least  impede  their  movement.  In  frost 
and  flame  they  would  be  equally  at  home. 
"With  the  swiftness  of  light  or  gravitation  they 
could  speed  from  where  old  Bootes  leads  his 
leash  to  where  Sagittarius  draws  his  bow  in 
the  south.  With  bodies  of  such  fine  stuff  com- 
pounded, and  so  plastic  to  the  uses  of  the 
spirit,  their  knowledge  would  expand  until 
nature's  secrets  should  lie  open  to  their  eyes. 
Their  senses  would  be  so  acute  and  delicately 


168  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

balanced  as  to  be  capable  of  thrills  of  pleasure 
so  transcendent,  and  of  pain  so  poignant,  that 
the  experience  of  this  present  life  probably 
gives  us  no  comparison  to  estimate  them  by. 
Love  could  have  its  perfect  way  where  there 
would  be  perfect  comprehension.  In  this  stage 
no  personality  ever  knows  really  very  much  of 
any  other.  Each  is  shut  within  a  body  which 
at  the  best  can  only  partially  reveal  it.  Each 
living  soul  can  but  make  itself  known  and  can 
gain  knowledge  of  another  only  through  physi- 
cal media  which  are  limited  by  the  qualities  of 
the  matter  which  compose  them.  The  mind  is 
continually  weighed  down  and  retarded  by  the 
thousand  ills  that  flesh  is  heir  to.  ^N'o  doubt 
the  Ethereal  body  is  also  subject  to  its  own  ills. 
But  being  in  close  relation  to  the  psychical  life 
and  immeasurably  better  fitted  to  be  the  vehicle 
for  its  expression,  knowledge  and  love  must 
have  opened  to  them  possibilities,  not  infinite 
indeed,  but  so  extended  that  we  may  not  even 
try  to  guess  their  limits. 

All  this  is  based  upon  two  propositions,  first, 
that  any  possible  future  life  must  be  an  em- 
bodied life,  and,  second,  that  there  is  such  a 
material  stuff  as  may  serve  the  uses  and  needs 
of  such  a  life.  It  is  an  hypothesis.  But  every 
advancing  step  of  human  knowledge  has  been 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  169 

gained  by  an  hypothesis.  If  the  theory  be 
found  to  bring  into  coherence  facts  which  are 
known  to  be  facts,  and  make  them  inteUigible, 
and  lead  to  the  discovery  of  other  facts  till 
then  unknown,  it  slowly  changes  from  an 
hypothesis  to  a  conviction.  Will  this  one  bear 
that  test? 

Let  us  first  see  to  what  extent  it  fits  the 
language  of  the  New  Testament. 

"  For  we  know  that  if  the  earthen  fabric  of 
our  tent  be  dissolved,  we  have  a  building  from 
God,  a  fabric  not  made  with  hands,  eternal,  in 
the  heavens.  For  truly  in  this  we  groan  being 
burdened,  not  for  that  we  would  be  unclothed, 
but  clothed  upon,  that  what  is  mortal  may  be 
swallowed  up  in  life.  We  faint  not,  but  though 
our  outward  man  is  decaying,  yet  our  inward 
man  is  renewed  day  by  day."  "  All  flesh  is  not 
the  same  flesh,  there  is  one  flesh  of  men,  an- 
other of  beasts,  another  of  birds,  so  there  are 
celestial  bodies  and  bodies  terrestrial,  but  the 
glory  of  the  celestial  is  one,  and  the  glory  of 
the  terrestrial  is  another.  So  also  is  the  resur- 
rection of  the  dead.  It  is  sown  in  corruption, 
it  is  raised  in  incorruption :  it  is  sown  a  natural 
body,  it  is  raised  a  spiritual  body.  If  there  is 
a  natural  body,  there  is  also  a  spiritual  body. 
The  first  man  is  of  the  earth,  earthen,  the 


170  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

second  man  is  of  heaven.  As  we  have  borne 
the  image  of  the  earthen,  let  us  also  bear  the 
image  of  the  heavenly."  "For  the  earnest  ex- 
pectation of  the  creature  waiteth  for  the  reveal- 
ing of  the  sons  of  God.  For  we  know  that 
the  whole  creation  groaneth  and  travaileth  in 
pain  with  us  until  now.  And  not  only  so,  but 
we  ourselves  which  have  the  first  fruit  of  the 
spirit  groan  within  ourselves  waiting  for  our 
adoption,  that  is  to  say,  the  setting  free  of  our 
body."  "And  Jesus  was  transfigured  before 
them,  and  his  face  did  shine  as  the  sun,  and 
his  raiment  was  white  as  the  light,  and  behold 
there  appeared  unto  them  Moses  and  Elias  talk- 
ing with  him."  "And  it  came  to  pass  as  he 
sat  at  meat  with  them  he  took  bread  and 
blessed  it  and  brake  it,  and  gave  it  to  them, 
and  their  eyes  were  opened  and  they  knew  him 
and  he  vanished  out  of  their  sight."  (Literally, 
"They  gradually  ceased  to  see  him.")  "As 
they  were  looking  he  was  taken  up  and  a  cloud 
received  him  out  of  their  sight.  And  as  they 
were  earnestly  gazing  after  him  as  he  went  into 
the  heavens,  behold  two  men  in  white  vesture 
stood  beside  them."  "  I  know  a  man  in  Christ, 
fourteen  years  ago  (whether  in  the  body  or 
out  of  the  body  I  know  not),  caught  up  into 
paradise,  and  that  he  heard  things  of  which  it 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  171 

is  not  permissible  for  a  man  to  speak."  "From 
henceforth  let  no  man  trouble  me,  for  I  bear  in 
my  body  the  marks  of  Jesus  Christ." 

Such  quotations  might  be  extended  indefi- 
nitely, but  these  are  enough  to  show  that  the 
companions  and  survivors  of  Jesus  looked  with 
confidence  for  a  future  life  of  such  sort  that 
their  spirits  would  not  be  left  naked,  but 
clothed  upon  with  some  kind  of  material  sub- 
stance which  was  even  then  being  woven  for 
them  in  the  secret  place  of  their  own  being. 
Whether  or  not  the  Ethereal  stuff  which  science 
now  knows  does  or  does  not  prove  to  be  that 
w^hich  may  serve  for  the  physical  basis  of  a 
continued  personal  life,  it  may  fairly  be  said 
that  it  fulfils  the  requisite  conditions  better 
than  anything  else  which  is  known.  The  late 
Professor  Cope  in  his  "  Origin  of  the  Fittest " 
asks,  "  Is  there  any  generalized  form  of  matter 
distributed  through  the  universe  then  which 
could  sustain  consciousness?"  And  answers, 
"  The  presumption  is  that  such  a  form  of  matter 
may  well  exist." 

Mr.  John  Fiske  in  criticising  this  hypothesis 
has  said  that  "  the  essential  weakness  of  such  a 
theory  as  this  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is  thor- 
oughly materialistic  in  character.  By  it  the 
putting  on  of  immortality  is  in  no  wise  the 


172  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

passage  from  a  material  to  a  spiritual  state. 
It  is  the  passage  from  one  kind  of  a  materially 
conditioned  state  to  another."  This,  I  con- 
ceive, is  precisely  where  its  strength  resides. 
It  turns  away  from  that  phantasmal  region  of 
"  disembodied  ghosts,"  and  looks  for  the  hope 
of  continued  existence  at  the  top  of  the  hill, 
but  in  the  line  of  the  same  path  up  which  life 
has  been  climbing  throughout  the  aeons.  Our 
souls  shrink  from  disembodied  being  wath  a 
repugnance  which  cannot  be  overcome  by  any 
alluring  visions.  Much  as  we  may  yearn  for  im- 
mortality, we  would  rather  miss  it  than  possess  it 
under  conditions  of  which  w^e  can  form  no  con- 
ception and  which  terrify  by  their  strangeness. 
The  passage  into  life  at  any  stage  is  never  ter- 
rifying to  the  new  creature  being  born,  what- 
ever pangs  it  may  cost  the  eternal  mother. 

Professor  Shaler,  Dean  of  the  Scientific  Fac- 
ulty of  Harvard,  in  his  book  upon  "The  Indi- 
vidual," uses  these  very  remarkable  words,  "  A 
number  of  men  of  no  mean  authority  as  natu- 
ralists, some  of  them  well  trained  in  experi- 
mental science,  have,  after  long  and  apparently 
careful  inquir}^,  become  convinced  that  there 
is  evidence  of  the  survival  of  some  minds  after 
death."  This  is  a  conclusion  which  sensible 
men  will  reach  very  hesitatingly.      The  evi- 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  173 

dence,  if  evidence  it  can  be  called,  is  found 
by  an  analysis  of  that  enormous  but  unsavory 
mass  of  "  Spiritism,"  "  Occultism,"  "  Telepathy," 
"  Hypnotism,"  and  such  like.  It  is  a  material 
with  which  sane  men  are  very  reluctant  to 
deal.  It  is  so  contaminated  by  fraud,  charla- 
tanry, credulity,  and  hysterics  that  one's  natural 
inclination  is  to  pass  by  it  as  far  on  the  other 
side  the  way  as  the  width  of  the  road  will 
allow.  But  at  the  same  time  it  must  be  con- 
fessed that  there  is  a  growing  willingness  to 
admit  that  there  is  "  something  in  it."  If  the 
subject  of  supernormal  phenomena  be  brought 
into  discussion  in  club  or  drawing-room,  and 
strange  accounts  are  exchanged  of  alleged  in- 
stances, the  chances  are  that  seven  out  of  ten 
present  will  end  by  giving  their  assent  to  Ham- 
let's dictum,  "  There  be  a  thousand  things  in 
heaven  and  earth  not  dreamed  of  in  your  phi- 
losophy, Horatio."  It  is  not  easy  to  find  even 
an  educated  man  who  will  categorically  deny  the 
assertion  that  there  are  instances  wherein  one 
human  personality  communicates  with  another 
without  physical  media  of  intercourse.  At  any 
rate,  the  belief  in  the  actual  occurrence  of  hyp- 
notic suggestion  and  telepathic  communication 
has  come  to  be  quite  general.  The  proof  is 
very  difficult  to  come  at.     When  one  arises 


174  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

from  reading  the  reports  of  the  "  Society  of 
Psychical  Research,"  or  the  reported  experi- 
ments of  Dr.  Charcot  or  Professor  Flournoy, 
he  finds  himself  in  a  very  exasperating  mental 
state.  It  is  not  so  much  that  he  has  found 
what  appears  like  a  fact  here  and  there  scat- 
tered through  a  mass  of  fraud  and  self-decep- 
tion. If  that  were  all,  he  could  reasonably 
dismiss  the  whole  matter,  saying  falsus  in  uno, 
falsus  in  omnibus.  But  that  is  not  all.  He 
has  the  impression  that  he  is  here  in  the 
presence  of  some  kind  of  natural  phenomena 
which  are  real,  but  which  are  being  exploited 
by  the  wrong  people.  He  is  not  much  better 
satisfied  when  he  finishes  the  report  of  a  "  Sey- 
bert  Commission "  of  lawyers  and  scientists 
appointed  by  a  great  university  to  investigate 
the  alleged  facts.  He  feels  that  here  again  the 
question  is  in  the  wrong  hands.  \i  the  one  set 
are  too  credulous,  the  other  are  too  dogmatic. 

The  truth  would  seem  to  be  that  we  are 
beginning  to  take  serious  account  of  a  set  of 
unclassified  psychic  phenomena  which  corre- 
spond very  closely  with  a  newly  described  set 
of  physical  phenomena.  The  unthinking  per- 
son is  prone  to  regard  such  things  as  wireless 
telegraphy  and  Rontgen  photography  as  merely 
inventions  or  discoveries  which  are  only  a  little 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMxMORTALlTY  175 

more  wonderful  in  degree  than  the  hundreds 
which  precede  them,  but  not  differing  from 
them  in  kind.  This  misapprehends  their  sig- 
nificance. They  are  discoveries  in  an  entirely 
new  region.  They  are  doors  opened  into  an- 
other universe.  It  is  a  material  universe,  to  be 
sure,  and  one  which  we  now  see  to  have  been 
about  us  always.  Its  existence  had  long  been 
suspected,  but  there  was  no  proof,  and  there 
did  not  seem  to  be  any  reason  or  faculty  by 
which  proof  could  be  made.  It  is  a  universe 
where  the  ordinary  laws  of  matter  are  inopera- 
tive, indeed  appear  to  be  non-existent,  but  of 
its  reality  no  one  any  longer  thinks  of  doubting. 
Now,  coinciding  with  these  new  and  strange 
phenomena  of  the  physical  universe,  there 
appear  to  be  equally  strange  phenomena  of 
the  psychical  world.  Is  it  too  much  to  believe 
that  the  two  are  in  some  way  correlated  ?  That 
living  mind  can  and  does,  under  certain  un- 
usual conditions,  act  upon  other  living  minds 
without  the  medium  of  "matter"  can  hardly 
be  any  longer  questioned.  Whether  it  be  a 
"  departed  "  spirit  touching  a  living  one,  or  one 
living  one  touching  another,  seems  to  me  of 
little  consequence.  The  one  is  antecedently 
just  as  credible  or  as  incredible  as  the  other. 
The  conditions  of  such  psychical  movement  are 


176  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

not  yet  known.  Whether  or  not  they  ever 
will  be,  no  one  can  say,  but  there  seems  to  be 
on  the  part  of  the  scientiJBc  world  a  growing 
disposition  to  examine  them  with  a  better  tem- 
per than  heretofore.  ]^ot  to  speak  of  Mr. 
Alfred  Wallace,  whose  dicta  in  this  region  can 
scarcely  be  taken  seriously,  such  physicists  as 
Crookes,  such  psychologists  as  Flournoy  and 
Hyslop  and  many  others  equally  sane,  are  ad- 
dressing themselves  to  a  study  of  this  region  in  a 
way  from  which  much  may  be  hoped.  So  far  all 
indications  point  to  the  belief  that  all  such  equivo- 
cal phenomena  have  their  place  in  a  region  which 
is  not  really  "spiritual"  in  the  sense  in  which  that 
word  is  usually  used,  but  in  one  which  is  "  mate- 
rial," though  not  in  the  sense  which  that  word  or- 
dinarily connotes.  In  a  word,  the  last  discovery 
in  physics  and  the  last  experimentation  in  psy- 
chology seem  to  be  approaching  each  other. 

The  way  in  which  all  this  concerns  our 
theory  of  the  other  life  ought  now  to  be  evi- 
dent. If  that  life  be  one  which  involves  and 
requires  the  interaction  of  spirit  and  matter, 
and  demands  it  at  a  time  when  the  matter 
which  ordinarily  serves  the  spirit  for  its  ex- 
pression shall  not  be  available,  it  is  much  to 
be  even  thus  tentatively  convinced  that  spirit 
can  function  under  other  conditions  than  those 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY      177 

which  belong  to  the  ordinary  life  of  man.  It 
gives  point  and  direction  to  ancient  and  wide- 
spread, but  vague  and  unfruitful,  hopes  and  be- 
liefs. As  Professor  Shaler  judiciously  says:  — 
"  Notwithstanding  this  urgent  disinclination 
to  meddle  with  or  be  muddled  by  the  problems 
of  spiritism,  the  men  of  science  have  a  natural 
interest  in  the  inquiries  of  the  few  true  ob- 
servers who  are  dredging  in  that  dirty  sea. 
Trusting  to  the  evident  scientific  faithfulness 
of  these  hardy  explorers,  it  appears  evident 
that  they  have  brought  up  from  that  deep 
certain  facts  which,  though  still  shadowed  by 
doubt,  indicate  the  persistence  of  the  individual 
consciousness  after  death.  It  has,  moreover, 
to  be  confessed  that  these  few  as  yet  imperfect 
observations  are  fortified  by  the  fact  that 
through  all  the  ages  of  his  contact  with  nature 
man  has  firmly  held  to  the  notion  that  the 
world  was  peopled  with  disembodied  indi- 
vidualities which  could  appeal  to  his  own 
intelligence.  Such  a  conviction  is  itself  worth 
something,  though  it  be  little.  Supported  by 
any  critical  evidence  it  becomes  of  much  value. 
Thus  we  may  fairly  conjecture  that  we  may  be 
on  the  verge  of  something  like  a  demonstration 
that  the  individual  consciousness  does  survive  the 
death  of  the  body  by  which  it  was  nurtured." 


"  All  physical  science  is  only  a  probability,  and, 
what  is  more,  one  which  we  have  no  means  what- 
ever of  measuring.  It  all  rests  on  the  assumption 
that  the  course  of  nature  has  been,  is,  and  will 
continue  to  be,  uniform.  And  yet,  no  one  has 
ever  been  able  to  give  any  answer  at  all  to  the 
question,  What  proof  have  you  that  the  uniformi- 
ties which  you  call  laws  will  not  cease  or  alter 
to-morrow?  In  regard  to  this  we  are  like  a  man 
rowing  one  way  and  looking  another,  steering  his 
boat  by  keeping  her  stern  in  line  with  the  objects 
behind  him." — Fitzjames  Stephen. 


178 


CHAPTER  XYI 

The  individual  man  is  a  complex  being  of 
spirit  and  body.  Each  of  them  appears  to  be 
essential  to  the  very  existence  of  the  other. 
But  the  body  is  under  a  law  which  has  decreed 
its  destruction  at  three  score  and  ten  or  there- 
abouts. The  crucial  question  then  is,  When 
and  under  what  conditions  does  the  spirit  begin 
to  establish  a  nexus  with  a  physical  basis  of  life 
which  may  be  more  abiding?  The  law  of  the 
Conservation  of  Energy  does  not  avail  us  here. 
It  may  very  well  be  that  every  unit  of  vital 
energy  residing  in  any  living  form  may  be 
transmitted  into  vital  energy  in  some  other 
form  when  its  body  becomes  no  longer  able 
to  maintain  it.  This  is  sufficient  for  the  lower 
forms  of  life.  They  only  seek  to  keep  their 
species  going.  But  this  does  not  satisfy  us. 
We  want  the  continuous  life  of  the  individual. 
But  it  is  clear  that  this  life  cannot  begin  until 
the  fact  of  individuality  is  clearly  present. 
Now,  in  what  does  the  essence  of  personality 
consist?    In  the  lower  animals  there  is  really 

170 


180  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

no  such  thing.  Each  one  is  but  a  unit,  and  the 
real  entity  is  the  herd,  the  flock,  the  species, 
the  tree.  Where,  then,  does  personality  begin  ? 
It  can  begin  only  at  the  point  where  the  sense 
of  relationship  with  other  personalities  begins. 
But  this  is  the  place  where  the  moral  faculty 
emerges.  The  conscience  is  the  faculty  which 
feels  the  sense  of  obligation  to  other  personali- 
ties. It  is  kept  alive  by  the  stimuli  which 
comes  from  other  persons.  Its  characteristic 
sensation  is  sympathy.  It  lives  by  going  out 
of  itself.  Thus  by  another  path  we  reach  the 
elemental  truth  that  "  whoso,  saveth  his  life 
shall  lose  it,  and  whoso  loseth  his  life  shall 
find  it."  No  progression  in  mere  intelligence 
will  fill  the  requirements.  An  intelligence  of 
such  high  order  that  it  might  understand  every 
possible  relation  of  the  individual  would  still 
be  utterly  different  in  kind  from  a  moral  sense 
which  can  feel  these  relationships.  Sensation 
is  the  evidence  of  life.  Immortality  is  always 
associated  with  goodness.  Until  moral  sensi- 
bility become  self-conscious,  all  question  of 
personal  immortality  is  irrelevant,  because 
there  is,  accurately  speaking,  no  personality 
to  be  immortal.  Up  to  that  point  the  individ- 
ual living  creature,  whether  in  "human"  form 
or  not,  falls  short  of  that  essential  personality 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  181 

for  which  eternal  life  can  have  any  meaning. 
All  that  lies  below  is  in  the  material  order,  or 
in  the  kosmic  order,  and  not  in  the  kingdom 
of  persons.  In  a  certain  rough  and  ready 
fashion  we  actually  deal  with  individuals  on 
this  basis.  "We  do  not  count  as  persons  those 
whom  we  cannot  credit  with  moral  discrimina- 
tion. When  that  stage  is  reached,  however,  in 
the  case  of  an  individual,  we  may  fairly  expect 
that  he,  in  virtue  of  the  fact,  will  enter  upon 
a  new  phase  of  being,  and  by  all  the  analogies 
of  nature  we  may  expect  that  his  life  history 
from  that  point  onward  will  show  phenomena 
which  appear  to  have  little  or  nothing  in  com- 
mon with  what  preceded. 

In  the  study  of  nature,  whether  organic  or 
inorganic,  one  of  the  most  amazing  things  is 
the  way  in  which  every  now  and  then  a  con- 
tinuous progress  is  broken  at  a  "  critical  point," 
and  is  lifted  up  into  an  entirely  new  realm. 
One  of  the  most  familiar  instances  of  these  is 
the  behavior  of  that  common  substance,  water, 
under  the  influence  of  heat.  Between  32''  and 
212**  F.  it  is  a  ponderable,  colorless  fluid  whose 
properties  are  familiar,  and  whose  phenomena 
are  uniform.  Suppose  that  one  had  never  seen 
it  at  any  temperature  higher  or  lower  than 
these,  he  would  have  had  no  suspicion  that  it 


182  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

could  or  would  behave  in  any  other  way  or 
show  any  other  properties.  But  let  him  ab- 
stract its  heat  slowly  down  toward  the  freez- 
ing point.  Until  it  reaches  32°  it  is  still  the 
same  substance  about  which  he  had  supposed 
his  knowledge  to  be  complete.  Thereupon  it 
is  suddenly,  and  for  reasons  about  which  abso- 
lutely nothing  is  known,  transmuted  into  an 
utterly  different  thing.  The  properties  which 
it  possessed  an  instant  before  are  gone,  and  a 
new  set  take  their  place.  Its  whole  mode  of 
existence  is  transformed.  It  has  become  a  new 
creation.  A  still  more  significant  "critical 
point"  is  the  one  where  inorganic  matter 
passes  into  protoplasm.  It  is  true  that  no  one 
has  ever,  as  yet,  seen  this  transformation  occur. 
It  is  altogether  probable,  however,  that  it  is 
occurring  incessantly,  that  as  organized  matter  is 
continually  falling  into  disintegration  at  one  side 
of  the  process  it  is  continually  being  re-created 
at  the  other.  The  conditions  cannot,  or  at  any 
rate  have  not,  been  produced  artificially.  All 
indications  are  that  the  process  has  its  place 
in  the  realm  of  the  infinitely  minute,  where 
the  microscope  cannot  penetrate.  But  the 
inorganic  can  be  discerned  at  the  last  stage 
before  the  transmutation,  and  the  organic  at 
the    first    stage    thereafter,    and    though    the 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  183 

change  occurs  at  a  point  so  fine  that  it  can- 
not be  located,  it  is  still  a  change  which  is 
practically  infinite.  The  same  law  of  move- 
ment obtains  throughout  the  whole  path  of 
ascending  being.  A  long  series  of  movements 
appear  to  have  settled  down  to  the  determina- 
tion to  repeat  themselves  ad  infinitum^  when, 
presto,  it  starts  not  only  in  a  new  life  but  on 
a  new  plane.  If  it  shall  appear,  therefore,  that 
the  individual  who  has  reached  to  the  stage  of 
self-conscious  moral  personality  has  as  a  con- 
sequence come  into  new  relations  both  to  the 
universe  which  he  inhabits,  and  to  the  Supreme 
Personality  of  the  universe,  we  need  not  be 
surprised.  Nor  need  we  be  concerned  to 
decide  whether  the  change  is  "natural"  or 
"  supernatural,"  for  all  that  is  is  natural  in  its 
sphere.  It  accords  with  the  terminology  of 
Scripture  and  science  both  to  say  that  "he 
has  become  a  new  creature,"  that  he  "has 
passed  from  death  unto  life,"  that  he  has  "  been 
bom  again,"  that  "he  is  no  longer  subject  to 
the  law  of  sin  and  death."  It  is  probable, 
moreover,  that  the  subject  of  this  new  birth  is 
usually  more  or  less  conscious  of  the  fact.  In 
the  Christian  vocabulary  it  is  spoken  of  as 
"Conversion."  The  term  is  vague  and  the 
emotion  ill  defined.    But  some  emotion,  which 


184  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

may  be  called  by  this  name  or  some  other, 
seems  to  be  a  common  experience  of  all  those 
individuals  whose  moral  sense  has  awakened 
to  self-consciousness.  Even  if  it  be  not  identi- 
fied by  the  subject  at  the  moment  of  its  begin- 
ning, it  lies  in  the  consciousness  as  an  abiding 
sense  whereby  spiritual  qualities  are  discerned. 
If  it  be  asked,  therefore,  "  Who  are  they  among 
men  who  are  thus  born  from  above  ? "  the  an- 
swer is,  they  are  all  those  who  are  capable  of 
asking  that  question.  JSTo  one  can  interrogate 
life  unless  he  be  alive.  To  ask  the  question 
shows  that  the  inquirer  is  living.  But  it  must 
be  actually  an  inquiry  prompted  from  within, 
and  not  an  echo  from  around  him ;  a  spontane- 
ous outreaching  of  the  spirit  toward  being,  not 
merely  a  curious  question  put  by  the  intelli- 
gence to  a  spirit  indifferent  to  the  reply. 
Within  Christian  circles  this  passage  of  the 
individual  into  a  higher  plane  of  being  has 
been  traditionally  associated  with  certain  ob- 
jective instrumentalities  known  as  "  Sacra- 
ments." But  while  in  general  this  association 
has  been  regarded  as  a  reality,  there  has  never 
been  any  clear  agreement  as  to  its  rationale. 
A  vulgar  and  unintelligent  opinion  has  widely 
prevailed,  to  be  sure,  that  the  quickening  into 
a  more  exalted  life  is  actually  dependent  upon 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  185 

the  exhibition  of  the  sacrament  in  every  in- 
stance. But  this  opinion  has  never  gained  for 
itself  the  sanction  of  either  creeds  or  theolo- 
gians. The  most  that  these  have  ever  affirmed 
is  that  there  is  a  constant  relation  of  some  sort, 
not  well  understood,  between  the  life  and  the 
"  sacraments  where  they  may  be  had."  In  the 
first  and  crucial  case  when  an  apostle  was 
called  upon  to  express  the  rationale  in  action, 
St.  Peter,  at  the  baptism  of  Cornelius,  used  this 
very  significant  expression,  "  Can  any  man  for- 
bid water  that  these  who  have  received  the  Holy 
Spirit,  even  as  we,  should  not  be  baptized?" 
The  point  to  be  noted  is  that  the  apostle 
recognized  that  Cornelius  and  his  companions 
were  already  "living."  He  did  not  think  of 
the  sacrament  as  the  instrument  to  produce  the 
life,  but  he  did  think  and  act  as  though  it  had 
some  actual  relation  to  the  life.  The  other 
sacrament  is  always  dealt  with  the  same  way. 
It  is  "  bread,"  to  nourish  a  life  already  existent, 
it  is  "  wine,"  to  invigorate  an  energy  already 
present.  The  elemental  concept  of  the  sacra- 
mental idea  seems  to  be  to  emphasize  and  keep 
alive  the  truth  that  even  the  most  exalted  form 
of  spiritual  life  still  has  a  necessary  nexus  with 
matter  on  the  one  hand,  and  that  on  the  other 
its  own  essential  qualities  are  moral  purity,  of 


186  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

which  water  is  the  counterpart  in  the  physical 
realm,  and  sympathetic  affection  which  is  best 
expressed  by  brethren  breaking  bread  with  one 
another.  But  in  no  case  has  the  Christian 
Church  ever  asserted  or  believed  that  the  citi- 
zenship of  the  New  Kingdom  can  be  populated 
only  by  this  means. 

There  is  yet  an  outlying  difficulty  which  I 
approach  with  hesitation  because  I  am  not  able 
to  see  a  solution  which  is  altogether  satisfac- 
tory. Throughout  this  study  in  spiritual  biol- 
ogy we  have  assumed  that  the  subjects  of  the 
classification  which  we  seek  are  adult  men  and 
women.  That  is  to  say,  they  are  individuals 
who  have  advanced  so  far  toward  complete 
human  development  that  they  may  fairly  be 
examined  for  our  purpose.  But  what  of  the 
Infant,  the  immature,  the  undeveloped,  whose 
physical  life  is  broken  up  ?  To  this  it  may  at 
least  be  replied  that  the  marvellous  possibili- 
ties which  are  seen  to  lie  in  the  law  of  hered- 
ity may  well  contain  all  that  is  needed  here. 
When  we  consider  what  actually  is  carried  over 
from  parent  to  child  through  the  microscopic 
bridge  of  a  single  germ  cell,  we  need  not  de- 
spair of  heredity  doing  for  the  soul  as  it  does 
for  the  body.  That  ethical  qualities,  when 
they  exist,  are  transmissible  is  a  common  expe- 


EVOLUTION  OF   IMMORTALITY  187 

rience.  It  would  at  least  be  no  violation  of 
the  analogies  of  Scripture  and  nature  if  the 
child  of  one  who  has  achieved  life  eternal 
should  also  prove  to  be  immortal.  Where, 
or  how,  or  under  what  circumstances  its  devel- 
opment may  take  place  is  the  same  question,  no 
more  and  no  less  difficult,  under  any  theory  of 
a  future  life.  Our  theory  has  in  its  favor  that 
so  far  as  any  answer  at  all  can  be  given  it  gives 
it  in  terms  of  processes  which  we  know  to  be 
real. 


"  With  increased  experience  and  reason  Man  per- 
ceives the  more  remote  consequences  of  his  actions, 
and  the  self-regarding  virtues,  such  as  temperance, 
chastity,  etc.,  which  during  early  ages  are  utterly 
disregarded,  come  to  be  highly  esteemed  or  held 
sacred.  Ultimately,  the  moral  sense  or  conscience 
becomes  a  highly  complex  sentiment,  originating 
in  the  social  instincts,  largely  guided  by  the  appro- 
bation of  one's  fellow-men,  ruled  by  reason,  self- 
instinct,  and  in  later  times  by  religion." 

—  Charles  Darwin. 


188 


CHAPTER  XYII 

The  state  of  being  in  which  men  now  find 
themselves  is  often  spoken  of  as  a  '4ife  of 
probation."  The  phrase  is  quite  misleading, 
indeed,  one  might  well  denounce  it  as  mischiev- 
ous. The  crude  notion  which  it  represents  is 
that  men  are  allowed  in  this  life  a  sort  of  pre- 
liminary course  of  action,  with  a  public  exam- 
ination at  the  end  of  it,  upon  the  result  of 
which  will  be  determined  a  final  and  fixed  sta- 
tus of  eternal  existence  which  shall  be  without 
any  element  of  probation.  The  conception  is 
legal  and  mechanical,  and  is  one  which  can 
have  no  application  to  vital  processes.  It  is 
true  that  this  life  is  one  of  probation,  but  then 
it  is  true  that  the  next  life  must  also  be  so. 
That  is  to  say,  living  is  always  "  on  probation." 
The  living  creature  at  any  stage  remains  alive 
so  long  and  only  so  long  as  it  conforms  to 
the  conditions  of  living.  An  "unconditioned" 
life  for  a  finite  creature  is  a  contradiction  in 
thought.  It  matters  not  at  all  under  what  cir- 
cumstances such  a  life  is  thought  of  as  unfold- 
189 


190         evolutio:n  of  immortality 

ing  itself,  it  must  still  be  under  conditions. 
The  life  of  a  tree,  a  beast,  or  a  man,  the  life 
here  or  yonder,  can  never  be  otherwise  than 
upon  probation.  But  the  terms  of  the  proba- 
tion are  never  artiJScial  but  always  natural. 
They  cannot  be  represented  by  imagery  drawn 
from  the  procedure  of  a  trial  in  a  court,  but 
only  by  biological  ideas  such  as  "  conformity  to 
environment"  and  "  survival  of  the  fit."  This 
law  must  needs  hold  wherever  and  whenever 
life  is.  There  cannot  but  be  a  "  future  proba- 
tion," but  it  is  vital  and  not  judicial. 

It  v^rould  be  much  nearer  the  reality  to  say 
that  for  the  individual  this  life  is  a  time  of 
gestation.  This  life  would  seem  to  bear  a  rela- 
tion to  the  one  to  come  analogous  to  that 
which  the  period  of  embryonic  development 
bears  to  this  one.  The  living,  individual  hu- 
man form  may  with  truth  be  regarded  as  a 
matrix  or  womb  within  which  another  form 
may  have  been  quickened  and  be  slowly  matur- 
ing. Indeed,  the  analogy  is  so  complete  as  to 
be  startling.  The  laws  and  processes  of  all  life 
are  probably  better  seen  in  the  study  of  em- 
bryology than  anywhere  else.  There  a  life  is 
built  up  within  a  life.  Its  foundation  is  laid 
in  an  already  existent  life.  Its  material  and 
psychic  stuff  is  derived  through  an  organism 


EVOLUTION  OF  BIMORTALITY  191 

surrounding  it,  but  are  not  identical  with  that 
organism.  It  is  separable  from  the  parent 
form,  and  outlasts  it.  Its  future  development 
may  immeasurably  surpass  the  one  within 
which  it  is  for  the  time  pent.  We  therefore 
think  of  the  "new  man"  as  one  who  may 
perdure  through  and  after  the  dissolution  of 
the  frame  which  now  is,  being  compounded  of 
psychical  and  Ethereal  stuff,  derived  through 
and  builded  up  within  the  present  individual 
man.  He  has  been  begotten  in  the  secret 
places  of  the  present  individual,  and  death  is 
not  his  conception  but  his  new  birth. 

But  we  cannot  leave  the  subject  here.  "We 
have  interrogated  nature  and  revelation  to 
find  a  place  where  the  individual  man  may,  if 
he  achieve  so  much,  cross  over  from  the  life 
that  now  is  to  another.  We  have  become  sat- 
isfied that  the  passage  is  possible  for  those  who 
possess  the  requisite  moral  vigor,  and  that  the 
bridge  has  in  at  least  one  instance  been  safely 
passed.  We  have  found  reasonable  ground  to 
believe  that  conscious  human  personality  may 
and  does  in  some  way  hold  commerce  with 
other  personalities  through  channels  which  are 
no  doubt  material,  but  composed  of  matter  dif- 
ferent from  that  with  which  the  laws  of  physics 
generally  deal.    We  have  seen  that  this  whole 


192  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

conception  conforms  strikingly  to  the  analogies 
within  our  present  knowledge,  and  have  come 
to  believe  that  the  universe  is  a  more  spacious 
place  than  had  been  feared.  Admitting  it  to 
be  true,  therefore,  that  in  God's  house  are 
many  mansions,  and  that  the  door  by  which 
one  passes  from  his  present  habitation  may 
swing  into  another  for  him  who  has  now  the 
key,  one  is  at  liberty  to  ask,  what  mode  of  life 
may  be  expected  there  ?  Future  life,  to  be  per- 
sonal life  at  all,  must  be  continuous  with  that 
which  now  is.  One  must  begin  again  where 
he  leaves  off.  But  this  implies  the  passage 
into  the  other  life  of  men  at  all  stages  of  de- 
velopment, provided  only  they  have  been  devel- 
oped far  enough  in  any  case  to  make  the  transit 
possible.  The  law  of  growth  and  progress, 
with  the  concomitant  possibility  of  degenera- 
tion and  death,  must  be  carried  over  with  them, 
and  must  hold  wherever  living  creatures  are. 
One  may  not  affirm  that  the  next  life  is  an 
"endless"  one  for  those  who  attain  it,  any 
more  than  this  one  is.  It  has  its  own  laws  of 
being,  and  the  obverse  of  every  law  is  a  penalty, 
and  the  ultimate  penalty  everywhere  is  destruc- 
tion. 

But  under  the  conditions  of  the  Ethereal  life, 
moral  development  must  needs  be  both  more 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  193 

certain  and  more  swift  than  under  those  of 
mortal  life.  The  power  of  moral  choice  must 
remain,  and  to  live  rightly  still  demand  the 
strenuous  will.  It  must  demand  it  all  the  more 
there,  the  life  being  endued  with  such  indefi- 
nitely increased  capacities.  But  there  can  be 
no  breach  of  personal  continuity.  Death  can 
only  make  evident  what  the  actual  condition 
of  the  individual  is.  He  that  was  holy  is  holy 
still.  He  that  was  filthy  is  filthy  still.  But 
there  are  degrees  in  moral  corruption.  It  may 
have  been  so  all  pervading  in  one  that  physical 
death  only  served  to  break  up  the  body  out  of 
which  the  spirit  had  long  since  perished  for 
lack  of  a  suitable  home.  Or,  the  new  man  may 
pass  on  carrying  with  him  moral  faultiness,  real, 
though  not  so  enwoven  with  the  fabric  of  his 
being  but  that  it  may  be  purged  and  elimi- 
nated by  the  discipline  of  the  new  life,  which 
lays  on  few  stripes  or  many,  as  the  need  may 
be.  The  Ethereal  universe  shall  still  hide  se- 
crets which  thought  will  find  its  joy  in  discov- 
ering. Being  a  human  world,  the  inhabitants 
thereof  can  but  live  humanely. 

"  To  the  lover  full  function 
Of  an  unexhausted  joy ; 
To  the  warrior,  crowned  ambition 

With  no  envy's  base  alloy. 
o 


194  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

"  To  the  ruler,  sense  of  action 
Working  out  his  great  intent; 
To  the  prophet  satisfaction 
In  the  mission  he  is  sent." 

The  gross  conditions  of  material  existence 
which  in  the  present  stage  drag  love  down  to 
lust  and  make  of  the  spirit  a  bondslave  toiling 
to  win  bread  for  the  body,  shall  have  been 
replaced  by  others  so  fine  and  plastic,  so 
responsive  to  psychic  needs,  that  a  progress 
toward  completeness  of  life  is  possible  and 
inconceivably  swift. 

Or,  there  may  be  those  who,  dazzled  with  the 
possibilities  of  the  new  life,  presently  begin 
to  sin  magnificently,  and  the  natural  conse- 
quences of  violated  law  there  as  here  shall 
work  their  quick  destruction,  through  anguish 
intolerable,  to  the  complete  and  awful  catas- 
trophe of  the  second  death.  And  lying  at  the 
end  of  it  all,  one  seems  to  catch  a  dim  glimpse 
of  that  "far-off,  divine  event  toward  which  the 
whole  creation  moves."  To  every  man  who  is 
able  to  appreciate  at  all  the  meaning  as  well  as 
the  mystery  of  life,  God  and  nature  join  in  the 
appeal  formulated  for  all  time  by  the  Divine 
Man;  — 

"  Enter  ye  in  at  the  strait  gate :  for  wide  is 
the  gate  and  hroad  is  the  way  that  leadeth  to 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  195 

destj^ction,  and  many  there  he  which  go  in 
thereat.  Because  strait  is  the  gate  and  narrow 
is  the  way  which  leadeth  unto  life,  and  few  there 
he  that  find  it.^^ 


"  Death  for  the  body  with  life  is  combined, 
Darkness  disputes  with  the  light  for  the  mind, 
While  spirit  climbs  upward,  if  good  it  desires, 
Or,  chained  to  the  earth  by  its  sin,  it  expires. 
God  is  our  Life,  and  our  Light,  and  Upraising; 
Whom  God  doth  uplift  shall  never  cease  praising.'' 

—  Felix  Melancthon. 


196 


CHAPTER   XYIII 

A  PRACTICAL  question  still  remains  to  be  con- 
sidered. No  moral  or  religious  belief  can  be 
adopted  or  rejected  without  some  regard  to  the 
effect  which  it  may  naturally  be  expected  to 
produce  upon  the  conduct  of  those  who  enter- 
tain it.  How  will  the  doctrine  of  Immor- 
tability  as  distinguished  from  immortality 
affect  men's  moral  life?  If  we  say  to  them, 
"You  are  not  necessarily  immortal,  but  you 
may  become  so  if  you  set  about  it  properly," 
and  if  they  believe  us,  will  they  be  the  better 
or  the  worse  for  it?  Of  course  the  intrinsic 
truth  of  the  doctrine  does  not  depend  upon 
any  such  consideration.  That  must  stand  or 
fall  on  other  ground.  If  it  be  true,  men  must 
adjust  themselves  to  it  as  best  they  may. 
Truth  is  neither  made  nor  unmade  by  an  esti- 
mate of  its  consequences.  But,  at  the  same 
time,  when  one  is  endeavoring  to  determine 
whether  or  not  such  a  proposition  be  true,  he 
cannot  but  be  influenced,  more  or  less,  by  his 
judgment  upon  its  practical  result  one  way  or 
the  other. 

107 


198  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

It  is  quite  commonly  taken  for  granted  that 
a  general  belief  in  the  necessary  immortality  of 
all  men,  with  the  proffer  of  an  eternal  heaven 
and  the  threat  of  an  eternal  hell,  is  essential  to 
the  moral  order  of  society.  It  is  unquestionable 
that  this  common  belief  has  been  a  powerful 
deterrent  from  evil  living  at  some  times  and 
within  certain  limited  areas.  It  operated  thus 
in  Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages,  and  it  does 
so  in  the  territory  of  Islam  to-day.  But  all 
will  agree  that  the  righteousness  thus  evoked 
has  been  and  is  of  a  very  unsatisfactory  quality. 

"The  fear  o'  hell's  a  hangman's  whip 
To  hand  the  wretch  in  order. ' ' 

It  has  never  succeeded  in  being  more  than 
that.  Reward  and  penalty  have  been  exploited 
to  the  utmost  for  moral  purposes.  The  joys  of 
heaven  have  been  painted  in  forms  most  attrac- 
tive and  colors  most  ravishing,  the  picture  of 
hell  with  its  lurid  torments  has  been  drawn  by 
the  hands  of  the  world's  most  transcendent  gen- 
iuses. But  the  result  has  always  been  amaz- 
ingly meagre  in  its  effect  upon  men's  conduct. 
While  it  has  fired  a  few  with  an  ecstatic  long- 
ing and  overwhelmed  a  few  in  a  deadly  terror, 
the  great  multitude,  even  while  they  assent  to 
the  truth  of  the  doctrine,  live  as  though  it  were 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  199 

non-existent.  In  our  own  time  it  may  well  be 
doubted  whether  its  effect  upon  conduct  is  even 
appreciable.  Forty  years  ago  Frederick  W. 
Kobertson  noted  that  "future  retribution  has 
become  a  kind  of  figment.  Hell  is  in  the 
world  of  shadows.  The  tone  in  which  edu- 
cated men  speak  of  it  still  is  often  only  that 
of  good-humored  condescension  which  makes 
allowances  for  childish  superstition."  It  is 
generally  allowed  even  by  the  most  orthodox 
that  the  exploitation  of  a  "material"  heaven 
and  a  "material"  hell  has  been  a  mistake. 
But  what  they  do  not  appear  to  notice  is 
the  fact  that  when  the  "  material "  element 
is  eliminated  from  the  idea  nothing  is  left  of 
it.  If  it  is  not  material,  it  is  nothing.  Its 
practical  effect,  where  it  has  had  any,  has 
been  due  to  the  way  in  which  it  has  either 
allured  or  frighted  the  imagination.  But  to 
do  this  it  must  be  presented  in  forms  which 
the  imagination  can  present  before  itself.  If 
its  form  be  left  out  its  substance  vanishes.  The 
attempt  to  substitute  purely  spiritual  pleasures 
and  spiritual  agonies  for  the  crude  glories  of 
heaven  and  the  crude  horrors  of  hell  must 
always  remain  unsuccessful.  In  point  of  fact, 
the  whole  presentation  of  future  reward  and 
penalty  has  ceased  to  move.     The  awards  and 


200  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

the  sentences  are  felt  to  be  irrelevant.  The 
whole  scheme  is  mechanical  and  artificial.  It 
rests  upon  presumptions  which  are  so  essentially 
unreasonable  and  inequitable  that  advance  in 
intelligence  and  moral  sincerity  renders  them 
intolerable.  The  classification  of  "  righteous  " 
and  "  wicked  "  is  the  merest  figment.  No  objec- 
tive fact  corresponds  to  it.  If  it  be  assumed 
that  all  men  without  regard  to  their  stage  of 
moral  development  pass  on  into  another  life, 
which  is  endless  by  its  very  nature,  the  sense 
of  fair  dealing  demands  that  each  should  be 
left  unclassified  and  undoomed  until  the  end 
of  his  line  of  moral  movement.  This  is  indeed 
the  explicit  teaching  of  Christ,  concerning  those 
who  are  capable  of  passing  on  at  all.  The 
wheat  and  the  tares  grow  together  until  the 
end  of  the  aeon,  and  then  the  wheat  is  gath- 
ered into  the  garner,  and  the  tares  are  thrown 
into  the  fire  to  be  destroyed.  But  this  natural 
process  of  life,  growth,  and  development,  cul- 
minating finally  in  stable  being  or  in  disin- 
tegration, has  nothing  in  common  with  the 
scheme  of  probation,  trial,  judgment,  acquittal, 
and  sentence  which  has  lost  what  power  it  ever 
possessed  to  influence  life.  It  is  the  plain  fact 
that  whenever  the  belief  becomes  current  that 
a  future  life  of  some  sort  is  assured  for  all  in 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  201 

any  event,  men  will  conclude  to  wait  until  that 
life  is  reached  before  beginning  any  very  strenu- 
ous effort  to  determine  its  character. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  follow  the  teaching 
of  Christ  and  of  nature,  we  find  a  moral 
dynamic  which  is  quite  incalculable,  and  from 
which  there  is  no  escape.  Compared  with  its 
dire  discovery  of  disaster  following  in  the  path 
of  moral  offence,  the  threat  of  hell  is  but  as 
the  rattling  of  a  medicine  man's  gourd.  Let  a 
man  once  see  that  the  alternative  which  con- 
fronts him  at  every  step  of  his  moral  progres- 
sion is  life  or  death,  that  his  task  is,  as  Christ 
says,  "  to  win  for  himself  a  soul,"  or,  at  a  farther 
stage,  it  is  "  to  save  his  soul  alive,"  and  he  will 
realize  that  he  is  face  to  face  with  realities  and 
not  with  an  extraneous  arrangement  arbitrarily 
established.  The  appeal  is  to  that  deepest, 
strongest,  most  persistent  of  all  desires,  the 
love  of  life.  "Skin  for  skin,  yea,  all  that  a 
man  hath  will  he  give  for  his  life."  It  need 
hardly  be  repeated  that  he  cannot  die  unless 
he  have  first  become  alive.  But  when  once 
moral  consciousness  has  been  reached  by  the 
individual,  its  instinct  of  self-preservation  may 
confidently  be  depended  upon  to  induce  strenu- 
ous action  to  protect  itself  from  death,  unless 
it  be  misled  by  some  outside  assurance  that 


202  EVOLUTION  OF   IMMORTALITY 

death  is  not  for  it  a  possible  issue.  It  may 
well  be  that  suicide  is  possible  for  a  human 
being  at  every  stage  of  its  history,  here  or 
yonder.  Indeed,  it  is  not  easy  to  conceive  the 
possibility  of  a  conscious  personality  being  kept 
alive  against  its  own  determination  to  make  an 
end  of  itself.  Such  a  condition  of  existence 
would  seem  to  contradict  the  very  idea  of 
personality.  It  is  possible  that  God  may  be 
no  more  able  to  force  a  man  to  live  than  to 
force  him  to  love.  There  are  places  where 
coercion  defeats  itself.  Certainly  it  is  true 
now  that  every  man  holds  in  his  hand  the 
power  to  slay  himself  if  he  so  wills.  One 
wonders  sometimes  why  the  power  is  not  more 
frequently  used.  Hamlet  was  mistaken  in  his 
explanation,  —  'tis  not  "  the  dread  of  some- 
thing after  death,  which  makes  us  rather  bear 
the  ills  we  have  than  fly  to  others  that  we 
know  not  of."  'Tis  not  because  "  resolution  is 
sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought." 
The  resolve  upon  self-destruction  is  reached 
even  more  reluctantly  by  the  brutal  savage 
who  has  no  thought  of  anything  lying  beyond 
than  it  is  by  the  educated  man  whose  imagina- 
tion is  crowded  with  pictures  of  post-obituary 
horrors.  The  elemental  instinct  of  living  may 
be  trusted  to  keep  one  from  making  his  own 


EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY  203 

quietus  wherever  he  may  be.  The  horror  of 
ceasing  to  be  is  a  far  more  powerful  emotion 
than  the  fear  of  damnation.  If  fear  be  needed 
at  all,  or  be  efficacious  at  all  to  the  evocation 
of  goodness,  here  is  a  form  of  disaster  having 
a  potency  compared  with  which  the  threat  of 
hell  is  but  a  bogie  to  frighten  children.  Let 
one  think  as  lightly  as  he  pleases  of  the  joys 
of  heaven  or  the  pains  of  hell,  "  the  law  hath 
yet  another  hold  upon  him."  The  law  is  that 
same  inexorable  one  which  operates  through- 
out the  whole  kingdom  of  living  things.  The 
continuance  of  any  individual  in  being  is  depend- 
ent upon  his  conforming  to  the  requirements 
of  life  at  the  stage  where  he  is.  St.  Paul  has 
set  out  in  the  most  accurate  statement  what 
are  the  laws  for  the  kind  of  beings  which  most 
of  us  have  come  to  be.  When  one  has  reached 
to  that  point  of  moral  progress  which  he  de- 
scribes by  the  phrase  "  being  in  Christ  Jesus," 
he  has  passed  out  from  under  the  inferior  law 
binding  upon  creatures  who  have  not  reached 
so  far.  "  For  they  that  are  after  the  flesh  do 
mind  the  things  of  the  flesh,  but  they  that  are 
after  the  spirit  the  things  of  the  spirit.  For 
the  mind  of  the  flesh  is  death,  but  the  mind  of 
the  spirit  is  life.  The  mind  of  the  flesh  is  not 
subject  to  this  higher  law  of  God,  indeed  it 


204  EVOLUTION  OF  IMMORTALITY 

cannot  be.  But  ye  are  not  in  the  flesh  but  in 
the  spirit,  provided  that  the  spirit  of  God  in- 
habiteth  you.  If  the  Christ  is  in  you  the  body 
is  indeed  dead  because  of  sin,  but  the  spirit  is 
life  because  of  righteousness.  If  the  spirit  of 
him  that  raised  up  Jesus  from  the  dead  be  in 
you,  he  that  raiseth  up  Christ  Jesus  from  the 
dead  shall  quicken  also  your  mortal  bodies 
through  the  spirit  that  dwelleth  in  you.  So 
then,  brethren,  we  are  under  obligation  not  to 
the  flesh  to  live  after  the  flesh :  for  if  ye  live 
after  the  flesh  ye  are  bound  to  die,  but  if  by 
the  spirit  ye  mortify  the  action  of  the  body  ye 
shall  live." 

This  is  the  key  to  the  marvellous  welcome 
with  which  the  world  hailed  the  "good  news 
of  the  Gospel  of  Kesurrection  "  ;  to  the  languid 
indifference  with  which  the  gospel  of  deliver- 
ance from  hell  is  received  to-day ;  to  the  new 
enthusiasm  for  righteousness  which  might  be 
expected  to  burst  out  once  more  if  men  were 
brought  to  see  that  holiness  is  the  very  path  to 
abiding  life. 


The   Influence   of 
Christ  in  Modern  Life 

Being  a.  Study  of  the  Ne^iv  Problems 
of  the   Church   in  American   Society 

By  the  REV.  NEWELL  DWIGHT  HILLIS 

Paitor  of  the  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn 

lamo.    Cloth.    $1.50 

FROM  THE  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 

By  way  of  preeminence  this  era  now  dosing  has  been  an  era  of 
criticism  and  destruction.  Nothing  has  escaped  the  crucible. 
Scholars  have  carried  the  method  of  the  laboratory  into  the  library, 
the  gallery,  the  legislative  hall,  and  even  into  the  temples  of  religion. 
Old  poems,  old  histories,  old  science,  old  creeds,  have  been  pulled 
to  pieces,  and  studied  part  by  part.  With  some  the  analytic  spirit 
has  become  a  frenzy,  and  the  love  of  dissection  a  morbid  passion. 
With  others  analysis  has  represented  a  desire  to  know  the  exact 
facts.  Now  that  the  wave  of  criticism  has  passed  by,  changes  many 
and  great  are  found  to  have  taken  place.  Nothing  remains  as  it  was. 
We  have  a  new  chemistry,  a  new  pedagogy,  a  new  psychology.  And 
now  that  the  intellect  has  completed  its  analytic  work,  our  generation 
has  come  to  realize  that  the  heart  with  its  hunger  is,  as  before,  unap- 
peased.  Religion  is  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man.  The  creed  is 
the  outer,  verbal  photograph  of  that  inner,  vital  experience.  Man's 
interest  in  those  verbal  pictures  named  creeds,  unfortunately,  seems 
waning,  while  his  interest  in  religion  is  steadily  waxing.  As  Edmund 
Burke  once  said,  "  Man  is  by  constitution  a  religious  animal." 

Now  that  the  destructive  era  has  closed,  from  the  view-point  of  the 
new  scholarship  many  are  beginning  to  feel  that  the  critical  epoch 
was,  after  all,  an  epoch  of  mediocrity  and  second  rate  intellect.  All 
the  great  eras  in  art  and  literature  have  been  creative  eras  rather 
than  critical.  ...  In  his  preparatory  work  the  youth  enters  the 
laboratory  to  study  the  human  body,  counting  its  bones  and  study- 
ing the  chemical  elements  of  nerves  and  muscifS.  Later,  when  the 
young  Romeo  meets  Juliet,  he  is  lifted  into  a  new  realm  by  the  new 
friendship,  and  never  thinks  of  reducing  the  beautiful  girl  to  a  group 
of  small  jars  marked  "  lime,"  "  phosphate,"  and  "  carbon."  And 
there  are  the  best  of  reasons  for  believing  that  in  religion  the  critical 
epoch  has  gone  and  the  creative  era  has  come. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

ee  FIFTH   AVENUE,  NEW  TOBK 


Jesus   Christ 
and   the   Social  Question 

An  Examination  of  the  Teaching 
of  Jesus  in  its  I^eUtion  to  Some 
Problems  of  Modern  Social  Life 

By  FRANCIS  GREENWOOD  PEABODY 

Flummer  Professor  of  Christian  Morals, 
Harvard  Universitjf 

i2mo.    Cloth.    $1.50 


"The  author  is  professor  of  Christian  Morals  in  Harvard  Uni- 
versity, and  his  book  is  a  critical  examination  of  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  in  its  relation  to  some  of  the  problems  of  modern  social  life. 
Professor  Peabody  discusses  the  various  phases  of  Christian  social- 
ism in  this  country  and  in  Europe."  —  The  Baltimore  Sun. 

"  It  is  vital,  searching,  comprehensive.  The  Christian  reader  will 
find  it  an  illumination ;  the  non-Christian  a  revelation." 

—  The  Epworth  Herald. 

"  Discussing  in  '  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question '  the  com- 
prehensiveness of  the  Master's  teaching,  Francis  Greenwood  Pea- 
body,  Plummer  Professor  of  Christian  Morals  in  Harvard  University, 
says  that '  each  new  age  or  movement  or  personal  desire  seems  to 
itself  to  receive  with  a  peculiar  fulness  its  special  teaching.  The 
unexhausted  gospel  of  Jesus  touches  each  new  problem  and  new 
need  with  its  illuminating  power.'  "  —  The  SI.  Louis  Globe-Democrat, 

"  A  thoughtful  and  reflective  examination  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus 
in  relation  to  some  of  the  problems  of  modern  social  life." 

—  The  Louisville  Courier-Journal, 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

66  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 


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